


Tremble

by englishbutter



Series: Luminance [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Artistic License, Bittersweet Ending, Dubious Consent, F/M, Manipulation, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:32:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5529527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishbutter/pseuds/englishbutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Spitsbergen, 1879.</i> A rip between the realms has been discovered, sparking the curiosity of the world. Explorers hunt on the other sides, finding creatures to bring back and place on display, advertising them as the exotic.</p><p><i>London, 1880.</i> Sigyn Rosettia has been engaged to the wealthy Lord Theoric Faulkner in a desperate bid to save her family from financial collapse. On an outing to one of London’s latest freakshows, she there encounters a monster distressingly, confusingly, and achingly familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tremble

* * *

_“I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.”  
_ ― George R. R. Martin, _A Clash of Kings_

* * *

 _**i. a** _ **_breath_**

Spitsbergen had once been an isle for those hunting walrus and whale. But its commerce has changed in the recent past, and the creatures of the sea were abandoned in place of a prize far greater than ivory, meat, oil, or blubber.

It is nothing special to the naked eye — a mere ripple in the air like that of heat rising from baked stone. But its extraordinary nature is revealed when a hand is placed within the ripple, passing to the other side as if through a veil. It is a rip in reality, the scientists say. Something remarkable, more believable as the creation of a Jules Verne novel than the secret physics of the universe. Religious men call it a gateway to damnation. After seeing it, most think the rip an act of God, and the beings that prowl the night lands on the other side Lucifer’s demons.

But the new land is not one of fiery Hell; rather, Sir Donal Harrison’s first impression is that this new world through the rip is quite possibly even colder than Spitsbergen. When he looks to the mercury thermometer hung on the side of the sleigh, the temperature has dropped from Spitsbergen’s three degrees Fahrenheit to negative forty.

“Bloody Christ, it’s cold,” he swears, but whilst his loose and vulgar tongue would have turned a woman’s face white in civilised London, the two dozen hunters with him do not so much as listen.

The hunters are battle-toughed and single-minded individuals, Indians and Chinamen and other Englishmen willing to risk their lives for a few shillings and stories of glory. The band calls themselves, after local legend, Sigurd’s Men, but Harrison thinks of them as mercenaries of economic demand, and he their sponsor for this trip. They’ve brought a great many number of tools with them — every man is armed with a rifle, Harrison himself having a further two long-barrelled pistols of Holland & Holland make. Two Shire horses pull behind them an 1876 Gatling Gun — Harrison can see one of the men regreasing the mechanism, the machinery frozen solid within. But the firearms were not to be their most useful items, for they are victims of the temperature. Their most useful things would be the more mundane ones — the less exciting ice picks; the hundreds upon hundreds of yards of rope and heavy iron chain; the stout, shaggy ponies and Shire horses; and the huge, lead-weighted net, measuring thirty-five by thirty-five feet in size.

Harrison has seen other creatures that have been brought back from this side of the rip, and when the net was pulled out to show him its size, a flicker of doubt snaked through his heart at its ability to hold one of the devils he sought. But Sigurd’s Men know what they are doing, he reassured himself.

The landscape itself is a treacherous thing. The spires of ice and rock are densely packed together, a huge disadvantage should anything standing on the lips of the ravines they tread through decided to attack them. According to Reidar, Harrison’s guide, the ice opens up into a tundra a mile and a half from the portal’s mouth. Their prize lies at the point where the two places meet.

“I can assure you the creatures are quite stupid,” the Norwegian says, riding next to Harrison. He is hard to understand through his thick accent. “They have only basic clothing, and beyond that, I dare say your dog would have more brains than them. When caught, they are compliant.”

“Count Peder told me that they are like the Neandertal man.”

“Yes, an excellent comparison if there ever was one.”

It instills confidence in Harrison, and he readjusts his grip on the reins. “Faster, men! If we press hard now, we’re sure to be back before the sun sets in our world.”

Sigurd’s Men cheer in response. The sound of a whip cracks through the air, and the party speeds up, the skids of their sleds cutting through the snow like a warm knife through butter. Harrison urges his horse into a trot, holding the reins in one hand, and pulling out one of his pistols with the other. When he reaches the front of the column, he urges his stallion on further, ignoring the curses from behind as two others push their horses to catch him. But Harrison gets want he wants soon enough — two more bends, and he sees the end of the ravine.

He also sees his first wild giant.

It is male in shape, easily standing fifteen feet tall, and it looks around at them, blinking stupidly. Like all the others Harrison has seen back in London, the giant’s skin is a deep cobalt blue, its eyes a bloody red. Its hide is marked by black tribal tattoos, looping over the flesh and speaking of heathen practice. It is clad in a simple loincloth, and iron rings Harrison recognises are from his side of the portal sit on its fingers — old cogs from Spitsenberg’s rusted machinery.

Harrison freezes, his heart starting to pound in his chest. The men either side of him, however, do not freeze as he does. One of them hollers back to the main column in Norwegian, and two men on horses come forth at once, holding between them a rope studded with blunted spikes. They pass Harrison as the giant turns to run.

They charge forth, the rope uncoiling to hang suspended in the gap between them, stretching it wide as their horses split from one another. They run either side of the giant, the rope snapping taut, and the giant roars as the rope smashes into its knees. There is a resounding crack of breaking bone. The giant falls, and its weigh pulls one of the riders from his saddle, but he is forgotten as the others from the column swarm forwards, throwing the net over the stunned giant; Harrison can see sticky black blood congealing on the ice around the creature’s head.

“Chains!” he shouts when he finds his voice again, but the clank of heavy iron links drowns out the words. Sigurd’s Men know what they’re doing. They’ve come to this side of the portal far many more times than Harrison has. They’re experts at this. The thought does nothing to calm his pounding heart now. Even injured, tangled in the net, the giant terrifies him. What if it breaks free? He has found that stupid creatures make up for their lack of intelligence through brute strength.

“You must not worry,” Reidar says from next to Harrison. “See? It goes limp.”

Harrison looks. Reidar speaks the truth: the giant is still, barely trembling as the net is pulled back and the chains wrapped around the creature. “It’s a wonder they keep coming back here,” he says idly. “You’d think they’d learn.”

Reidar shrugs. “They don’t. I’m not going to complain.” He puts his chin on a fist. “Still, it makes me wonder. The ancients had their stories about these creatures, called them intelligent. I can only think that the cold froze their minds.”

Harrison grunts in reply. “Many of the giants in your mythology were stupid creatures. Thrym, for instance. Geirrod too.”

“Well enough,” Reidar says, “but they were still smarter than these brutes.”

The giant’s chains are hooked to the harnesses of a set of Shire horses, and for all the power they offer, the four of them still struggle with the weight. Harrison forces himself to look bored at the sight; his pride still bristles.

“I have a colleague who is convinced they wish to conquer us,” Reidar continues as he scratches his chin. “Makes no sense if you ask me. Even when they’re brought to mainland, they’re as dumb as sheep. Some have taken to chaining them down with links meant to hold ships to port, but it’s just another unnecessary expense.”

“Perhaps they have been so swept up in the novelty of owning they will throw their money at anything they deem needed for their purchase, for the aesthetic of it if nothing else.”

“‘Tis a fair point.”

They continue to talk when the shout rises for a second sighting. When Harrison sees the creature lumber onto the tundra, he takes his leave of Reidar, trotting his horse into the open land to watch Sigurd’s Men capture the giant, this one female, with the same interest as he watches London’s women walk their dogs in Kensington Gardens. She too stills when she is bound. At some point, his accountant Frank Tash comes to his side to discuss figures, how much the giants will sell for to the shows back in London.

“You’ve got about twenty-eight pounds worth, Sir,” Tash says finally.

“How many have been caught?” Harrison asks.

“Four, Sir, selling for seven pounds each.”

“ _Seven pounds?_ ” Harrison blusters. “Bloody Christ, I’m losing money doing this. How many more giants would I need to break even with what I’ve spent?”

“Another eleven or so, Sir?”

“ _Thelxiope_ can’t hold that many —” Movement catches Harrison’s eye. He turns in the saddle, squinting at the top of one of the cliff’s snowbanks. When he spots the movement again, he nudges his stallion’s flank. The new angle provides a better view, and his heart quickens when he sees.

“Mr. Harrison, Sir?”

He makes a decision. “Stay close.”

“Sir, what is it?”

“Has a child ever been captured?”

“A child giant? Not as far as I am aware, Sir. No one ever seen one of their children; the experts say they must horde the children as they would the most precious of gems.”

“Then that child down there is a fool.”

“Sir, you can see one?” Tash asks, excited.

But Harrison barely hears him. He thinks of the money he will make as he urges his horse forward, thinks of the stories that will be printed in the London broadsheets when he returns with a _child_. Sigurd’s Men shout at him as he rushes past them, ignoring the fifth giant they have ensnared. The child looks at Harrison as the stallion comes to a halt. Harrison unslings his rifle from his shoulder, lining up the shot as the child turns to run. He puts a finger to the trigger, draws a breath. The _crack_ of the gun echoes over the tundra. Harrison is rewarded by an unholy screech of pain, and he bares his teeth in a savage smile as the figure tumbles down the snowbank. It goes head-over-heels a half-dozen times before it comes to rest at the foot.

“Hold!” Harrison bellows as he urges his stallion forward once again, replacing his rifle. “Another! I’ve shot another!”

It tries to scramble away as Harrison gains on it, so he fires at it again with one of his pistols, hitting it in the leg. The guns are full of birdshot, harmless enough when aimed at these things; their skin is tough, and they heal fast. Nevertheless, the creature makes a hellish noise of pain as it falls again on its front. Harrison circles around it, scrutinising his catch.

This giant, Harrison finds with a sliver of disappointment, is not a child as he had originally thought. There is no doubt in his mind that it is fully grown, but is it only an inch or two taller than him. It turns over, snarling, the red eyes full of pain. A different species? A freak, even? Unique, anyhow. Valuable.

“Sir?” one of the Sigurd’s Men asks, coming up behind his shoulder on his own pony, Tash trailing him.

Harrison looks at him, and smiles. “We’ve got ourselves a mighty load of money here, good man.”

The man’s eyes widened when he sees the small giant. “Cor! How much you reckon we can get for that?”

 _Twenty pounds_ , Harrison thinks. _At least._ He doesn’t voice his thoughts, and he gives Tash a look to keep him silent too. “Get it bound,” he says instead. “Treat its wounds. I won’t have it dying on me.”

“Yessir.”

* * *

When the engagement of Miss Sigyn Rosettia to Lord Theoric Faulkner was announced on the late Saturday evening of August twenty-first, she felt curiously numb. There was no doubt that the match was a good one, astonishingly good, even. The engagement had been arranged for the sake of practicality. The Rosettia family boasted good bloodlines, traceable back to Plantagenet high society, but was near bankrupt.

The amassed family fortune had been disappearing over the past three generations, but it had been Sigyn’s grandfather who had lost the bulk of it. Her father, who had died the previous year, had done his best to save what was left. He had invested the money as best he could, but the markets hadn’t turned in their favour. It had been Sigyn’s mother who had arranged the marriage after her father’s death, driven to aim high in the face of her own failing health. It had been at her insistence that Sigyn had agreed to meet Theoric, and to accept his proposal on that gloriously warm August evening.

A dinner-dance had been arranged under the open skies for that night, the last vestiges of summer still clinging to the world. The gathering had fallen silent as Theoric took Sigyn’s arm and led her out of the circle of tables and chairs to the lawn beyond, so long and wide the end was swallowed by the night.

“My Lady Sigyn,” he said, kneeling on the grass and presenting her with a velvet box, “you are a beautiful woman. Smart, kind, humble, and you have written yourself into my heart.” Sigyn heard several of the women sigh behind her. “I would be honoured if you were to be my companion until the end of my days, as I would be endeared in being yours. My lady, my beautiful, wonderful lady, would you be my wife?” He opened the box, the diamond ring within glinting in the lantern light.

Sigyn saw her mother from the corner of her eye quiver with anticipation. She’d hoped that this had been the reason why Theoric had thrown the dinner party, had talked about it as they rode to his country manor in their carriage.

“You must accept if he proposes,” she said. “Oh, you’d break the poor creature’s heart if you refused.”

Sigyn could imagine her mother’s thoughts in that moment, silently begging for her to accept. “I … I shall,” she said. “I will be your wife.”

Theoric hadn’t stopped smiling at her answer, slipping the ring onto her finger and entwining their hands to return to the diners’ applause.

It would be a lie to say Theoric is anything but a gentleman. He seems to be a rare man, considerate, intelligent, and he holds genuine affection for her, far more than Sigyn had ever dared hope for when the match was first proposed. He is handsome too, well-groomed, and takes obvious pride in his appearance. He wears silk-lined waistcoats embroidered with gold thread, his shoes freshly shined every morning, and his tailcoats and top hats are always clean and gleaming. His hair is neatly trimmed and brushed back, his sandy scruff of a beard evenly cut. And when he comes to collect her for night shows, he always asks after her, asks if she is well, if her mother’s health has improved any, if they would like to go to dinner after this latest opera he is escorting her to finishes as he helps her into the carriage waiting for them at the door.

In theory, Sigyn is enamoured with him, but there is an empty place within her. There always has been, and she had dreamt and hoped when she was younger that it would one day be inevitably filled liked it so happened in fairy tales. But that ember of hope was smothered as she grew older, and more cynical. She’d eventually accepted that she would have to live out her days without the torn-out part of her soul. It felt sometimes like an angry wound, inflamed and aching terribly in the night. But it was a hollowness born from the diet of magic within the tales she so dearly loved, she eventually reasoned. She has long since resigned the ache to the disappointment of adult life when fantasies of love were shattered.

Sigyn has accepted she will kiss bristle-lined cheeks when in her dreams her lips ghost along smooth skin, has accepted that her husband will be far more bulky than she had wanted him to be, and far less full of fire-cracker energy than she had hoped.

The life laid out for her is the good enough that most people dream for, Theoric the man many women will not find for themselves. It infuriates her when her feelings of platonic affection towards him refuse to deepen even after four months. It leaves her weeping into her pillows with frustration after the indulgent nights at the plays and operas and circuses. For he is a good man, yet she cannot give herself to him as he does to her.

“You love him,” she tells herself. “You love him as dearly as he loves you.”

But she cannot convince herself of the lie.

She rises late the next day, hand on the bell pull when there is a knock on the door. “One minute!” she calls, jumping from the bed and hurriedly pulling a dressing gown over her night shift. “Come in.”

“My lady,” her maid, Rosie, says, opening the door and curtsying. “Lord Faulkner is outside, and he wishes to speak to you.”

“Show him in, and tell him I shall be with him in a few minutes.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

Sigyn looks to the time when Rosie leaves, gasping a little when the clock hands show it to be nearly ten thirty. She leans over the bed to tug on the bell pull, and a bare minute later, three more maids enter. “Quickly, please,” Sigyn says to them. “My fiancé is waiting downstairs.”

“You’re a lucky woman, my lady,” Vanessa says. “Lord Theoric is so kind and handsome. If it’s not too bold to say, my lady, I’m mighty jealous.”

“He is a good man,” Sigyn agrees, her voice hollow.

If the maids note her tone of voice, they say nothing about it. She’s glad of it.

The dress they have for her is ruby red, covering her from neck to toe. She breathes in when the maids tighten her corset, remains motionless as they do the back of her dress up. It’s a flattering piece of clothing, one of the first gifts she had received from Theoric. The lace choker it is matched with is another gift of his. She waves away the earrings Ellie presents her and hurries out the door barefoot, conscious of how long she has kept Theoric waiting. She runs a brush quickly through her hair, hoping he will not mind it loose.

Theoric waits downstairs in the receiving room, looking out the window onto the street below and a cup of tea in his hand. He looks around when Sigyn comes in. “Good morning,” he says, putting his teacup down and taking one of Sigyn’s hands in his. He brushes his lips over her knuckles.

“Good morning, Sir,” Sigyn says. “I’m sorry I have kept you waiting.”

“It is not a worry. It makes me happy whenever I see you in that dress. You look beautiful in it.”

“You’re too kind, Theoric.” She stands on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I did not expect you to come by today.”

“Neither did I, but I received an early Christmas gift from an old friend of mine. You’ve heard of Sir Donal Harrison, have you not?”

“I have. Mother follows the articles of his explorations. I did not know you knew him.”

“Well, it would hardly be an interesting marriage if we knew everything about each other before we walked down the aisle,” Theoric says.

“Yes,” Sigyn agrees, smiling. “So what was your gift?”

“Sir Harrison has recently returned from an expedition to Spitsbergen.”

“Spitsbergen?” Sigyn asks, surprised. “To the rip?”

“Of course,” Theoric replies. “He’s found something unique amongst the already strange. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d found, only gave me tickets for the opening day next week. For me and another. Would you accompany me, my lady?”

“Yes,” Sigyn says at once. “When?”

“Next Saturday. The eleventh.”

“I would be delighted to accompany you, Theoric.”

“Wonderful! Shall I meet you outside at nine o’clock, then?”

“That would be wonderful. Thank you, Theoric. Truly.”

“Anything for you.”

The moment is spoilt, however, by the Lady Freyja Rosettia. “My Lord Theoric!” Sigyn turns to face her mother.

She is a woman in entering her later forties. The golden hair she and her daughter share is streaked with grey, and the skin around her sea-green eyes is crinkled with laugh-lines. But Lady Rosettia is a beautiful creature, and regales in the stories of her youth of the young men who came to woo her before she finally settled with Sigyn’s father. She is tall, high cheekboned, slim, her nose as straight as a ruler. She is the opposite to Sigyn, who is made of her father’s rounder, softer shapes, her face oval and her tawny eyes doe-wide. She has his freckles too, and his eyelashes.

“Lady Rosettia,” Theoric says, sweeping her a bow. “Forgive my intrusion.”

“You do not intrude,” Lady Rosettia says. “We are soon to be family; you are welcome here any time you wish.”

“That is kind of you, Lady Rosettia.”

“Mother,” Sigyn says. “Theoric is to take me to the opening of Sir Donal Harrison’s new exhibition.”

“Oh? The one he has recently returned from in Norway?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Oh, you are lucky, child. Thank you, Theoric.”

“It is no trouble,” Theoric says. “Sigyn was just telling me how you keep a close account of what he does.”

“Yes. I believe ‘fan’ is the new word the Americans have given it.”

“I shall believe you on that account, my lady. I have not heard of it.”

“No doubt it will be everywhere soon.” Lady Rosettia smooths the front of her bodice. “Will you stay for lunch, my lord?”

“I’m afraid I can’t today. Jefferson has several reports I need to look at concerning my estates. There have been poachers caught on my country lands recently, and I need to address the issues as soon as I can.”

“I understand.” Lady Rosettia curtsies. “Will you not at least stay for morning tea? I’m sure Sigyn is famished.”

“ _Mother_ ,” Sigyn says in exasperation.

“I would like that, yes,” Theoric says. “Quickly, though, I really must be going.”

“It shall be quick, then. Mr. Edwards!” Lady Rosettia calls to the butler. “See that morning tea is set out for three.”

* * *

He shifts his position when the cage is lifted from the ship. It judders so violently he wonders what sort of crane is being used; something primitive, no doubt. The sides of the cage are covered with wood, hiding him from the world he desperately wants to see. His shoulder aches, his body still expelling the tiny pieces of metal the mortal had shot him with — _birdshot_ , he thinks it’s called. It is a weapon only a step up from flint-tipped arrows. He winces as one bleeds from his skin, falling with the smallest of noises into the hay lining the bottom of the cage.

He presses an eye to a gap in the wood, hissing with disgust when he beholds Miðgarðr. It is a place of _filth_. His lip curls as the sight of the mud and smoke, at the smog that covers the brickwork city in a layer of grime. He almost coughs for the coal dust in his lungs. _This_ is what the Allfather coveted as he would the most precious of jewels in his Weapons Vault? He’d hoped for more than this, had hoped that the anticipation he had felt for the ripping open of this final realm, so long sealed away, would be lived up to. His disappointment is immense.

He sits back in the centre of the cage, seething. A part of him debates what would happen if he were to bend the bars back and smash the wood of the crate now. He breaks the bottom of one in his contemplation, twisting it in and out of place. He does this until the metal finally snaps under the stress. Brittle stuff. Impure.

His thoughts are brought to a halt when the cage is placed on the ground so unskillfully he falls onto his side, hissing in complaint before he can bite it back.

Some minutes pass before he hears humans, three of them he judges by the steps, coming to his cage. He hides the broken piece of metal as a crowbar splits the top of the crate, pulling out of the nails before the front falls away. He shields his eyes from the sudden flare of sunlight.

“You see?” a voice says. “It is something wholly unique.”

“You’ve done it again, Harrison. Incredible … It’s sure to bring the crowds in. Is that hair on its head?”

“Yes. You see the length of the limbs too? It lends little doubt that this is a child.”

“You think it a dwarf? You just said that the limbs are in proportion to the rest of the body.”

“When the public is done staring at it or it dies before its time, I may be persuaded to sell the carcass to you to sate your curiousity.”

A laugh. “You plan to keep it?”

“I plan to rent it. This here is a source of money, my friend. I wish to be in control of that money, nor do I wish it to dry up. London Zoo may have its quagga, but I have this … this mutated giant. I will clear the zoo out, surely.”

Behind his up-thrown arm, he narrows his eyes. He knows one of the humans speaking is the sorry son of a whore who shot him, the other he doesn’t know. Hatred for the first human settles into the pit of his stomach as he lowers his arm, fixing his gaze on the two of them standing perhaps ten feet away, heads tilted in scrutiny. It takes little effort to memorise the face of the man who shot him — ruddy cheeked, covered by a flaxen beard and moustache, small eyes — and so he turns his attention to the other. He is the more portly of the two, his hair grey, and a round glass pressed against his left eye.

“Well, would you look at that,” the second human says, expression perplexed. “It looks almost like it possesses a spark of intelligence.”

* * *

Saturday the eleventh comes, and Sigyn rises in time to witness the delivery of their Christmas tree. It is an impressive ten-feet tall, and a team of servants and salesmen are arranging it by the fireplace in the main lounge. It almost tips over several times, and Sigyn finds the frantic cursing much to her amusement; her mother would turn white if she knew she had been listening to language of that vulgarity, much less finding it amusing.

“My lady.” It is Rosie, panting as she moves quickly down the stairs. “We must get you ready.”

“How long do I have?”

“Just under two hours. It is a quarter-past seven.”

The tub has already been prepared, and Sigyn washes herself carefully, dabbing lemongrass perfume on the insides of her wrists and the hollow of her throat. The dress Rosie has chosen is another one of Theoric’s gifts, a beautiful thing of white Chinese silk. The embroidered hem is one of the most beautiful things Sigyn has seen, but despite her love of it, it’s a piece she does not often wear. London is not a clean city, and whenever she returns home, the silk has turned grey from the smog. But today is a special day, and so Sigyn indulges herself, thanking Rosie for the choice.

When nine o’clock comes, Sigyn is ready. Her mother stands by her when the doorbell rings, reclasping her hands in front of her when their butler Mr. Edwards opens the door.

“Sigyn,” Theoric says to her when he sees her, “I … you … you look stunning.”

“You think so?” she asks, curtsying and so pulling the dress out to show him. “It is a favourite of mine.”

“And of mine,” Theoric says.

“Mother was talking of the possibility of using this as a model for … for my wedding dress.” Guilt clenches in Sigyn’s gut when she sees Theoric’s face slip at her pause. _You love him. He is as dear to you and you are to him._

“That would be a sight to behold,” he says, a touch too quietly. “I hope you chose to do just that.”

Theoric gives Sigyn his arm, turning on the top step and towards the carriage waiting for them at the foot. “I’ve booked for us to eat at the Riverfront.”

“H-how did you get a table?” Sigyn asks, astonished.

“I pulled a few strings. I’ve arranged for us to eat at one o’clock.”

“You’re too good for me, Theoric. You honestly are.”

“Anything for you.”

“I’ll return you before dusk. Will that suit, Lady Rosettia?”

“Yes, and well,” Lady Rosettia says. “I shall see you then! Be sure to tell me of the giants. And what Sir Harrison’s prize is.”

“I shall, Mother,” Sigyn calls as she climbs into the carriage. “Goodbye!”

The door shuts after Theoric climbs in, and he raps smartly on the wood panel by his feet with his duelling cane. The driver shakes the reins, and the pair of sleek black horses start forward, the carriage lurching into motion.

They sit in silence for a few moments, before Theoric says, “Sigyn.”

“Yes?”

His voice is sad when he says, “You seem less than enthusiastic about our coming marriage.”

A lump forms in Sigyn’s throat, and she is quick to say, “I am very happy in our engagement, Theoric. You are a gift to me. I’m lucky to have a gentleman such as you for a fiancé.”

“I ask simply because … because there are … moments, I see, just for a moment or from the corner of my eye. I think you are disappointed.”

Sigyn keeps from swallowing, and the guilt returns stronger than ever. “I’m not.”

“Is there something I am not doing right?”

“No,” Sigyn says, shaking her head. She leans to him, kissing his cheek. “You are perfect. Everything you do makes me feel special. You love me, Theoric, and I love you. You are precious to me.”

_You will be; one day. I will try, Theoric. I will try and return your affections._

“If you are sure,” Theoric says eventually. “The last thing I want is for you to be unhappy. I do not want to trap you in a marriage you do not want.”

“I am not trapped,” Sigyn insists. “Trust me, Theoric. If I were to promise you that if at any point I feel trapped by your side I would tell you my thoughts, would that settle your mind?”

“I do not want you to promise that,” Theoric says. “Marriage is a thing of mutual trust. I wish for your communication to come without promise, to come from your heart rather than from duty. You are loyal, Sigyn, far more loyal than many I have before met. I would have your loyalty from your love and nothing else.”

“Thank you.” She kisses his cheek again. “Trust me now that I tell you the truth, my love.”

His fingers close gently over hers, squeezing her hand in assurance. “I trust you.”

They say little more as they travel from Kensington through to Knightsbridge and towards Westminster. Sigyn settles to watch London roll past. When they reach Westminster Bridge, the carriage follows the Thames east, the driver hollering for people to move out of the way. The carriage bumps along the cobblestones, scattering the crowds as the horses plough through the traffic past first Waterloo and then Blackfriars Bridges. They keep to a trot, but it still takes twenty minutes for them to reach the Tower. Sigyn cranes her neck to look up at its architecture, Theoric running his thumb over the back of her glove in an distracted manor. His gaze too is on the Tower, but he does not give it the long looks Sigyn does.

“Where are we going?” Sigyn asks when the Tower disappears behind them.

“The Royal Albert Dock.”

“Have you been there yet? I haven’t seen it finished.”

“It looks splendid. The queen is very pleased with it.”

“Good God. I didn’t think she was pleased about anything,” Sigyn remarks, sitting back in her seat.

Theoric laughs long and hard at that.

The silence is banished with that, and they chatter amenably for the rest of the ride. They talk of entertainment mostly, of the books they have read and the plays and operas they have seen together. Sigyn regales Theoric with the stories of the latest penny dreadfuls she has read, and when she finishes, Theoric is shaking his head. “Lord, what sort of woman am I to marry?”

“Oh shush,” Sigyn says, swatting at his arm. “You enjoy those horror plays as much as I do.”

“But I did not know you sought the blood outside of my company. And here I was thinking that I should not subject you to things you have no interest in.”

“Then you clearly do not know me well enough.”

“Then clearly I need to invite you on more expeditions and day trips.”

Sigyn smiles. More time with him will mean more of a chance of her loving him in return.

Finally, they reach the Royal Albert Dock. “How far does it stretch?” Sigyn asks, awestruck at the sight before her. The dock is vast, disappearing into the distance. Ships occupy every mooring, men loading and unloading their contents and hollering at each other as they do so. The smoke is thick here.

“Three miles due east,” Theoric informs her. “It’s bigger than Royal Victoria. It’s a feat of the age.”

The carriage is beginning to slow, and Sigyn turns her gaze to the land side of the dock. Warehouses line the way, dark buildings each fifty feet tall. The one the carriage is slowing to a stop outside has its doors thrown wide. The crowds entering through them stretch far down the docks, snaking for nearly two hundred feet past the ships and cranes and crates. Theoric heaves a sigh. “And I’d hoped to beat the crowds.”

Sigyn sees almost at once why the crowds are large, and what Harrison’s prize is. Large advertisements have been glued to the warehouse’s doors, dozens of pieces of paper with the same words printed on them fifty times over:

_See the Malicious Beasts of the North! See over Twenty Giants! See The Malformed Runt!_

* * *

He is bored. Desperately so. He cannot think, cannot make his mind move, for it has rusted to a halt like cogs in the clockwork these humans use. He is trapped in the lethargy of his mind, and the boredom and the lack of thought eat at the other in a vicious cycle. It makes the situation all the more unbearable, makes the grinding pass of time a torturous thing.

He considers cutting this visit short and leaving his cell after dark.

He yawns, curling his tongue, cat-like, and settling back against the least filthy part of the brick wall.

Harrison has taken charge of this first ‘exhibition’, hosting him and the other jotnar in a newly-refurnished warehouse along this London’s River Thames. He, unsurprisingly, has become the centrepiece. His stature comes not from a mistake in genetics as these humans believe, but for his half-bred blood. He scoffs at their stupidity, for they have all the pieces of the puzzle, all the little differences they’ve noticed between him and the others — his hair, his ears, his flat teeth, his nipples — yet have not put them together. He wonders yet again why the Allfather sought to protect this realm as fiercely as he has. Perhaps he finds amusement in watching the humans stumbling in the dark.

The line to see the jotnar proceeds out the door, the public paying two pennies a head to see them. Firstly they file past the males near the entrance, the signs at the fronts of the cages proclaiming them to be the dominant and more dangerous creatures, the hunters and providers for the weaker females. He finds it astounding how much the humans think of themselves, projecting their own self-images onto the jotnar. He wonders too how they would react if they knew neither sex was dominant and each equally dangerous. Perhaps they would deem them even more unnatural, or perhaps they may self-combust; it would certainly be more amusing.

The crowds then move onto the females — again, the misconception that they are the submissive sex is proclaimed by the signs — before they come to the back of the warehouse, to his cage.

The humans flock past in droves, pointing and gasping and staring staring staring because _how different_ , they think, _how exotic, how alien; oooh_. They look at his ancestral marks, dark against his skin like the tattoos some of them wear, and think him a barbarian. They look at his red eyes and think him a devil. See his blue skin and think him demonic. But it is merely a show, to give them what they want because he has nothing better to do by this point. He moves from the wall to lie flat on his back instead — promoting gasps of excitement because he deigned to move a few wholly unexciting inches — and wonders if he would be able to drift off to sleep despite the babbling.

Upside-down, he spends the next few minutes re-reading the sign in front of his bars:

_The Stunted Giant! A True Freak of the Ice!_

And beneath it in smaller print:

 _Experts are unsure as to why this giant, nicknamed_ _‘Hallmund’ after a character in Icelandic sagas, is the size of a human adult male rather than of similar height to its fifteen foot brethren. Lecturer of Biology at Oxford University Samuel Wilkins proposes that this giant’s height may be their equivalent to dwarfism. He is unsure how the possession of ears and hair similar to our own has found its way into a species in which this has never been observed before, but is hopeful that this phenomenon is not unique to Hallmund alone._

_Captured 14th October 1880 by Sir Donal Harrison._

He closes his eyes and tries his best to fall asleep.

* * *

“Make way!” the carriage driver shouts. He makes a path to the front of the line, Theoric behind him with Sigyn in tow. Theoric holds the tickets in hand, and people who are about to grumble of line-pushers fall silent again when they see them. The man at the door takes them without glancing, ripping them before tucking them into his coat pocket. “God be with you,” he grunts as they pass.

Sigyn must only turn her head to see the first giant, and when she does, her breath catches in her throat.

The photographs she has seen of the beasts have not done them justice. The beast is titanic, three times her height and staring morosely down at the crowds. Its hand are wrapped around the bars, and its eyes, consisting of a flat red colour and a small pupil, are wide. Sad, almost. It keens when an orphan darts to the bars and jabs at its shin. The orphan runs at once, disappearing into the heaving crowd with a laugh before the guards on duty can catch him.

“It’s a magnificent brute, isn’t it?” Theoric says as he places his hands on her shoulders.

“I do not understand why they do not break free,” Sigyn says after a few moments silence. “Look at the muscles — they’re huge, they could rip the bars right off.”

“If they’re thinking to amass an army in London, having the troops be captured twenty at a time is a poor way to assemble it,” Theoric says. “Worry not, Sigyn.” He points with his duelling cane to an upper walkway. Sigyn’s eyes widen when she sees a huge gun mounted on a swivelling base secreted in the shadows.

“The guns have .56 calibre bullets,” Theoric says quietly. “Those are immensely powerful, Sigyn. If one were to escape, it wouldn’t make it outside. It is safe.”

“And that’s Sir Harrison’s guarantee?”

“Yes. He’s concerned about the public’s safety.”

 _Yes, and that_ _’s why he’s set up this exhibition a bare week after his return_ , Sigyn thinks cynically, but she nods.

“Look, the crowd’s moving. Donal said the freak giant is housed at the back.”

Indeed, the crowd is heaving over there.

* * *

He paces for something to do. Up and down. Up and down. Prowling like a cat on a wall. It doesn’t help. He runs through the Interference and Decoherence theories in his head he is so desperate for something to do, but remembering childhood physics does nothing to quell his frustration. He is about to resign himself to a day of boredom when he sees her.

He freezes, heart stopping in his chest. But no, impossible. It was just a human with a small likeness to her. He still searches the crowd, fully expecting to find a face similar to hers. But when he finds the woman again, it is not a passing familiarity he feels — it’s a mess he feels. For those are the blonde curls of her hair, they the flash of her eyes that shine a honey-brown. The splash of freckles on her cheeks.

It’s her, it’s really _her_. It’s what he’s been waiting for, everything he’s dreamed for and sought after for centuries —

But then rage grips him, because how dare _They_ condemn her to be reborn one of them? A human? He curses in his head as he stares, headless to the crowd looking at him in turn, some of them looking behind them to try and see what his eyes are fixed on. But they find nothing. He wants to snarl at them to move, but it would cause a panic, take her away with them. He could break out, yes, but he hasn’t missed the gun by the rafters like many of these humans have. He may have tougher hide than these things, but heavy bullets would still break his bones, and deflecting them would only cause more panic, and more shots. He would be hard-pressed to turn away dozens of heavy projectiles moving at such speeds at the same a time. And doing that might hurt her.

So he strains to get a better look at her from where he is, for he is gripped by her, drinking in the sight of her because Norns she is beautiful.

Beautiful.

Well.

_Alive._

Then he sees the man whose arm is linked with hers. And he cannot move, he cannot think, the clockwork of his mind screaming once again to a stop. For what he sees before him is _wrong_. He wants to scream. This is not how it’s supposed to be.

He hates how the human wretch pauses to brush a thumb along her cheek, murmuring something to her which she smiles at. She used to smile at him like that, and he can’t bear it. His vision clouds, and for heart-stopping seconds he cannot see, like the blood has rushed to his head all at once and his eyes are adjusting still. But when they clear, she has come closer.

* * *

“Sigyn, you have an eyelash on your cheek.”

“I do?”

“Hold still, darling.” Theoric gently brushes the eyelash to the floor, and says, “There, love. You look far more beautiful without that there.”

“A compliment, Sir?” Sigyn asks.

“There are never enough compliments to give you, dearest.”

She smiles at him and, squeezing the arm still entwined with her own, says, “Lead on, Theoric.”

They are moved along by the crowd, buffeted by their movements. They pass the female giants, staring for only a little while until they are brought to the final cage. Within it is a man. He is perhaps a scant inch taller than Theoric, dressed in little more than a loincloth of tough leather and rusted metal pieces. His hair is black, snarled, and so dirty it shines with grease. But these are his only human aspects. His skin is as blue as the other giants’, his eyes as red, marked from crown to toe with rough-cut lines of barbarity. He stands near the front of the cage, close enough for those near to reach out and touch. But unlike the other giants, no one does. An air of _danger_ hangs about him.

 _The Stunted Giant!_ the sign reads. _A True Freak of the Ice!_

“My God,” Theoric breathes. “Sigyn, look.”

“Theoric darling, I —”

She looks at the giant, almost accidentally, and their eyes lock.

There is a jolt in her chest, sudden as a strike of lightning over the horizon that leaves Sigyn gasping at the intensity. For there is something else, something powerful and aching, and by God, the empty part of her soul stirs at the sight of the creature. At first she thinks it merely pity, but if it is pity, it is not a pity she has before encountered. A pity that ignites something powerful and desperately old and —

“Sigyn, darling?”

Sigyn shakes herself, frightened. “I’m alright, Theoric,” she mumbles. “I felt just a little funny for a second.” She rubs her breastbone as the crowds moves them along.

“As long as it’s nothing,” Theoric says. “If you feel anything strange again, we can leave right away —”

Suddenly, just as they pass close, the man’s hand darts between the iron grid of his cage and tangles itself in Sigyn’s skirts. Sigyn shrieks in alarm, and the crowd screeches, ladies backing away, and gentlemen jumping. Soon Sigyn and Theoric are left in a wide space, unable to escape.

“Back, creature!” Theoric shouts, brandishing his duelling cane. He brings it sharply down on the man’s knuckles, but he does not flinch. He looks at Sigyn, looks and looks and looks into her very soul.

 _I know him_ , she thinks. But she does not. She found out about his existence a half-hour ago.

Panic drives her. “Release me, barbarian!” she exclaims. She tugs at her skirts, and the silk tears.

“Guard!” Theoric calls.

The man doesn’t let go, only wets his lips. He doesn’t lower his frightening eyes, either. “A _draugr_ is a thing to beware,” the Godless man says with a guttural accent she doesn’t recognise. “Do you remember that?”

Her eyes widen. The giants were supposed to be stupid creatures. But this one is speaking to her, and in English no less.

“ _Do you remember?_ ” he repeats, desperation licking at his voice.

“I don’t have time for your heathen beliefs,” she says, fighting her panic down.

The creature cocks his head to the side, and says lowly, sadly, “You wouldn’t have said such a thing once.”

The clatter of the guard comes up behind them, and they swipe at the man’s fingers with their studded batons. The blows crack against his hand and wrist, and he finally releases her, shying back and yowling in pain like a half-feral cat.

Then Theoric pulls her far back from the cage and into the crowd. He embraces her, pressing his lips to her hair and holding her tight. “Sigyn darling, are you well?”

“I am well, Sir,” Sigyn says, falling limp against him. “I am well.”

“Did it touch you? Look under your skirts?”

“No, Sir. I am merely shaken.”

“Our apologies, Madam,” one of the guards say, the huff of his breath making the hairs of his moustache quiver.

“Your creatures are dangerous,” Theoric says harshly. “They should be chained against the walls! Treated like the beasts they are. Who’s the management here?”

As Theoric argues with the guard, Sigyn notices the Godless man has crept back to the bars of his cage again, wrapping his icy fingers around the iron. His red eyes glitter like rubies in the firelight. He stares at her like a stray dog stares at an out of reach bone, his eyes lapping her up as if he cannot get enough. For the briefest of seconds she feels the empty part of her shift again.

“— we’re going, darling. Look at you — you’re shaking.”

Sigyn comes back to herself. “I … I do feel light-headed,” she lies, tearing her eyes away from the creature. “I would like to go.”

“As you wish. It’s for the best.” Theoric’s hand on her arm is firm, makes her feel safe. But it isn’t right. “I’ll take you home.”

“But Riverfront —”

“That does not matter; I will rearrange it.” To the guards: “Tell Sir Harrison I expect compensation for my fiancée’s dress. Four and a half pounds at least. No, _do not_ complain that it is too much — the silk was imported from China.”

“Theoric, it matters not,” Sigyn says.

“It matters to me, darling,” Theoric says. “I would not have these people take anything but their pennies from us. It’s good customer service.” These last words he directs at a new man in a suit; he must be the manager.

“We …” the manager blusters.

“Do not test me,” Theoric says. “I’ll send a man by later to collect the money.”

* * *

Her name is Sigyn. He mouths it once, twice, three times more, and it is like honey on his tongue: wonderful, divine, yet so cruelly, cruelly similar to her old name — _Sigunn_ , he yearns to say.

 _(_ _… dear heart …)_

 _(_ _… beloved …)_

His heart is twisting in his chest, invisible fingers squeezing tight around it. He moans quietly, touching his breastbone as if he is to pull the ache behind it out with crooked fingers and fling it away. Because the reality is that it _hurts_ to see her, hurts like a knife in his chest. It is a torture of the most decrepit kind to watch her laugh and smile and be protected by another — a _human_ — he does not know what to do. Those should be his smiles to collect….

“Loki,” Groá says from the cell next to him. “Hvað er fengið bolta?”

“Ekkert,” he replies through his teeth. He slides down the clean patch of wall, holding himself tightly. “Ekkert….”

 _(_ _… nothing …)_

* * *

“Oh Sigyn. _Sigyn_!”

Lady Rosettia’s arms are around her as soon as she steps through the front door. The surprise makes her jump, but the comfort is welcome after the fright the Godless man gave her. “I just heard what happened, darling,” Lady Rosettia says, pulling her close and rubbing her back. “It must have been terrifying.”

“Yes,” Sigyn agrees. “But Theoric was there, and he helped me.”

Theoric comes into the house in that moment. “Lord Faulkner,” Lady Rosettia says, leaving Sigyn to kiss Theoric’s cheek. “Thank you. Thank you for being there for my daughter. If you hadn’t been there and anything more had happened to her, if she’d been hurt …”

“It was no trouble,” Theoric says, tipping his hat to her. “I have every confidence Sigyn would have done the same had our positions been reversed.”

“I am sure of it.” Lady Rosettia turns back to Sigyn, and her face falls. “Oh, just look at your dress! It was just so beautiful…. Did that thing rip it?”

“I will be receiving compensation for it, Lady Rosettia,” Theoric says. “I’ll make sure Harrison pays.”

“Both Sigyn and I appreciate your kindness,” Lady Rosettia says. “Just what did we do to deserve you?”

“Mother,” Sigyn whispers, part embarrassed and part annoyed that her mother claims Theoric is theirs both.

But Lady Rosettia does not hear Sigyn. “Lunch was only made for one, but I will have Mrs. McCullough prepare more. Come, sit in the lounge. Have you seen the tree yet?”

* * *

There is no green in this place. This _London_ is an amalgamation of brick and mortar and concrete, and it reminds him of the caverns beneath Niðavellir. His bare feet scrape along the cobblestone roadways slick with slime and sand and soot mixed with a fresh dusting of snow. His feet are soon sore from the uneven surface and black from the muck. But he sits now atop one of the finer buildings: a whitewashed one that the owner must take pains to keep clean. He cares not for the dark footprints he leaves on the building as he climbs up the drainage pipe, nestling himself against a terracotta chimney warm with the fire in its adjacent grate below. He spies on the house opposing this one, identical to those around it. Its façade is illuminated by the gaslights along the street, reflecting off the windows.

He followed her carriage here after he had spoken to her that morning, creating a double to occupy the cell whilst he slipped through the bars unseen. He’d changed his skin into something more tolerable to the weather — Jotunheim may have been cold, but this temperate oceanic climate, even in winter, was far too warm for his jotun skin — and his clothes covered with an illusion to appear as the humans did.

As he followed the carriage, he listened to this world, his knowledge growing the further they went. He learnt of police lines, of news events, of government and wars in lands far away from this England. He learnt the names of pieces of currency, what had come into fashion recently, what Mrs. Calvin was getting her sister for Christmas. He learnt of authors and orphans and the best places to beg, of what the humans thought true magic was and of a psychic reading that was to take place in Whitechapel later that night. But most of all, he heard the news of Harrison’s arrival with the jotnar. Heard of himself. Heard the people whisper of what had happened.

And through that, he learnt the name of the man she had been with, and ground his teeth in recognition.

Theoric.

Murder ignited in his heart at the name, and he vowed when he heard it to kill him. To, unlike last time, bury the knife between Theoric’s ribs with his own hand. He knows where Theoric lives, and he knows too that she cares for him. He will have to bide his time.

Although it is late in the night, a lamp burns behind the curtains of a second floor window. He knows it is her room — he would recognise her profile anywhere. Though he aches to be close to her, he refrains from closing the distance and perching on her window sill like a crow. So instead he listens.

“You love him,” he hears her whisper to herself. “You love him.”

 _Theoric?_ he wonders.

He’s relieved that she seems to be trying to convince herself. He has found a place within her.

 _I promise you_ , he thinks, _it shall be as it is meant to be._

 

**_ii._ _we dream of dust_**

It has been a week since Sigyn and Theoric saw the giants. It has been a week since the runt has consumed her every waking thought. A week that he has flitted in and out of her dreams. She would be flying, her fingers stretched out to either side of her and her hair a sheet of gold in the dark. She would be treading the streets of London, gliding upon a river’s surface clothed in captured moonlight woven into gossamer. She would be lying upon a vast bed of furs whilst her nose was filled with heady Indian spices and north lights painted the skies.

“Do you remember?” he would whisper in her ear as his fingers close gently around her shoulders. She wakes before the stranger of her dreams kisses her hair. She curls over her pillow when she yearns for these dreams so much so she hurts. She despises herself for her childish longing, for wanting something dangerous.

Sigyn knows that the Godless man’s question was not one of sense, but there is a nagging in her mind. As if she should know what it was he said.

Lady Rosettia noticed her moroseness in the hours after her return. She said nothing until Theoric had left, holding her questions until later.

“Are you troubled by what happened?” she has asked every day since. “Can I help? Can I get help for you?”

Sigyn’s answer is another lie she must force herself to believe through repetition: “Mother, I am not troubled.”

“Why do you say this to me?” Lady Rosettia asks, desperate. “There is something wrong; I can see it.”

“It is nothing.”

She stops asking eventually, although Sigyn knows she gives her worried looks when she thinks she is occupied by something else.

Theoric has seen her every day too, bringing gifts as way of apology. Sigyn thought the first times sweet, but after the fifth day, she is starting to become annoyed. He stops bringing them when she tells him this. They sit instead in the drawing room and drink champagne, talking of light things, of the coming Christmas and the plans they have made. Theoric mentions a party Harrison has invited him to that night, an exhibition to showcase an archaeological find from the Lake District he’s brought down to London.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to go,” he says, rubbing his face. “He’s been so — excuse my language — damnably hostile to me after what happened last week. I have no wish to stroke his ego anymore than what others already are for the giants.”

“Stay home, then,” Sigyn says as she takes a sip of champagne. She is watching the snow falling outside, fat flakes that pelt from the iron skies by the thousands.

“He’s agreed to pay for the damages to you dress,” Theoric says. “‘Because I’m an old friend of his’. Whatever friend I saw in him hasn’t come back from Spitsbergen, that I can assure you.”

“I don’t want to talk about what happened,” Sigyn says in a rush. She feels overwhelmed, feels as if she is drowning. A handful of seconds pass. “I have to get out,” Sigyn says quickly, putting the champagne flute down and rising swiftly to her feet.

Theoric stands too. “I’ll come —”

“No,” Sigyn says, holding out her hands in a gesture to stop him. “No, I need to be alone. Just for a few hours.”

“Sigyn,” Theoric says, eyes darkening. “You need a chaperon. It’ll be dark soon. Dangerous.”

“It’s two in the afternoon; I’ll be alright.”

“Yes, and it will turn dark by four.”

“I will be fine,” she insists. She turns to the door, walking briskly through the rooms. Her coat, gloves, scarf, and parasol are on their respective stands by the door, and she shrugs them on before Theoric can catch up with her. “I’ll return later,” she says, opening the door. Snow blows inside, and Sigyn opens the parasol before stepping out. “Good day, Theoric. I shall see you soon.” It’s a cold dismissal, but her chest is bursting. She needs to be alone, out of the house in a space of her own.

The winter sears her lungs. She pauses on the top step for a moment, breathing deeply before raising the parasol over her head and carefully making her way down. Her shoes are slippery on the cobblestones, but she doesn’t mind the slow pace at which she is forced to walk. Having to think about where to place her feet takes her mind off Theoric, off the giant. Of everything else. There is a choir performing _Hark! the Herald Angels Sing_ somewhere close by, their voices carried through the cold air. Sigyn stops for a moment, closing her eyes simply to listen.

She arrives at Kensington Gardens a half hour later. Snow ladens the park, and she brushes down a bench before sitting. She doesn’t think about the wet, trapping the handle of the parasol between her and the backrest so she can massage her temples. The lack of movement invites her previous thoughts back. They rush upon her like an opened river lock, and she bites her lip. Her chest feels tight.

The pond she has sat by has frozen over, the swans and ducks that usually inhabit the water nowhere to be seen. She used to come here with her parents to feed them in the summer months, crying when a swan had snatched her offered bread right from her fingers and had broken the skin doing so. She had been more wary after that, throwing the bread to them as did everyone else.

“The princesses fed animals from their hands,” she said to her father that day. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and her fingers stiff for all the bandages they were wrapped in. “Why can they do it but not me?”

“I don’t know,” Lord Rosettia had said, brushing the tears from her face with a thumb before kissing her brow. “You are my princess, Sigyn. My one and only.”

When Sigyn next opens her eyes, dusk is falling. The clocktower says it is nearly four o’clock. She rises to her feet — it will be dark over the course of minutes, and she’s stayed too long already.

Her parasol is heavy with snow, and it falls around her feet and onto the bench as she shakes it free. There is no one to witness her exit from the park, and the only people she sees are a couple upon the high street, heads bent against the wind and snow.

Sigyn shivers. Her coat and dress have been soaked through by the bench. The blue silk is nearly black around the bottom of her thighs, and she resolves to hurry home so she might change. Further up the road someone is whistling as they shovel grit onto the road, another man lighting the gas lamps. A coach-and-four trundles past. Sigyn crosses the road, eager to be home.

It is not a far walk — in good weather, she can walk home within fifteen minutes — but the snow slows her progress. Her heels are a hindrance, and there are moments when she thinks about taking them off and dashing home bare-footed. But the idea is thrown away every time.

She is close to Piccadilly Road when she becomes aware of someone behind her. They are a movement in the corner of her eye, and Sigyn increases her pace a fraction. She isn’t worried yet, finding comfort in the familiar streets, in the knowledge that little bad happens in London’s west. But the man speeds up too, maintaining the twenty-foot gap. She thinks about taking her shoes off again so she may run.

“Ma’am?” the man calls to her.

She walks faster.

A curse behind her. “Ma’am, please. We ein’t trying to hurt you.”

 _We?_ That is answered soon enough: three others peel out of the shadows soon afterwards, and Sigyn is running, dropping her parasol and pulling herself along the fences of the streets. Her feet fly from under her, but the fence bars keep her upright. She has no chance to take her shoes off, the laces complex and the knots tight, and so it is only a matter of time before the men stride beside her, herding her into an alley between two houses.

“Stay away,” Sigyn says sharply.

“We ein’t going to hurt you, Miss,” one of the men coos at her. “We’re just lost.”

Sigyn’s heart is in her throat. “I have no money.”

“And so she catches on,” another says at the same time the leader clucks, “Liar, liar.”

“I have no money,” Sigyn insists. “I have only pennies —”

“Pennies don’t buy silk, little dove,” the leader says. His men crowd her, forcing her against a wall.

“I’ll scream,” Sigyn threatens. “Leave me be, or I’ll land you in gaol. Lay a finger on me, and you’ll regret it.”

“We won’t be laying no fingers on you,” the leader says, “if you turn out your pockets, sweetheart.”

“I have —”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to _lie_?” the man roars. He slams her back against the wall, and the breath is driven from Sigyn’s lungs at the impact. Her head smashes against the brickwork, and her hands come to the man’s arm, her nails useless beneath her gloves.

“Police,” Sigyn wheezes, tears falling from her eyes. “Help … Police….”

“There ain’t no coppers ‘round here that can hear you,” the man says as he looks her up and down. “Oh, but if you have no money, we’ll have fun with you in other ways, little dove. So I suggest you measure what you value most and give me what I want.” He licks his lips in such a way Sigyn flinches. “But a pretty little thing like you, wandering out on this dark and stormy night on yer lonesome. Those tears of yours will freeze, lady. Here, let me help.” She pushes desperately at his chest when he cages her against the wall. She smells the cheap alcohol stench on his breath as he leans close to lick a slow, broad stroke up her cheek.

And then there is a break within her. A fracture in her mind that bleeds light.

Sigyn’s fingers curl into a fist, and she punches her assaulter in the temple. But the blow isn’t one made in desperation, the strength behind it unrefined — it is a punch laid with skill and conviction, and the man’s head snaps to the side. Surprise is what makes him stumble most, back far enough to give her room to attack again. She kicks him away as she reaches into his tattered coat for the knife, sliding the handle into a reversed grip.

The other three start into action, running at her with hands outstretched. The skirts of her dress are hindering as she takes a lower, sturdier stance, driving an elbow into the first man’s nose when he swipes for her. He falls with a cry, his blood staining her dress. Sigyn has no thought for it, turning to the next man who jumps back to avoid the knife. The third tackles her from behind. He locks his arms around her neck, snarling wordlessly in her ear. Something on his person catches the side of her dress and rips it to the corset beneath. She spreads her feet wide, rolling her shoulder down and throwing her weight forward. The man lifts from the ground with a yelp, tumbling into the second and sending them both to the floor like bowling pins.

One of them swears, and the man with the broken nose climbs shakily to his feet to come at her again. Sigyn puts her back to the nearest wall and slashes outwards with the knife. The man yelps when the blade catches his palm. He spits on the ground and runs, the other two following him mere seconds later.

“Bitch,” the leader spits from beside her. “You Goddamn _bitch_.”

Sigyn turns fast. He has risen to his feet, standing hunched with an arm to his chest. Blood dribbles from his lips. He lunges, slapping at her with his free hand. Sigyn avoids the blow to her head and closes the distance, kicking his legs out from under him. His head connects with the cobblestones as she follows him down, her knee digging deep into his sternum. She thrusts the knife under his chin, the steel kissing the skin of his neck. He stills under her, a dog’s whimper in his mouth. There is a part of her that wants to cut his throat for daring to lay a hand on her, for licking her tears.

“M’lady, I’m sorry,” the man says, his voice two octaves higher. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Sigyn takes the knife from his throat, the bloodlust leaving her as quickly as it had come. The knife falls from her grip as she backs away, turning tail and running from the scene. Behind her, the man is the one now calling for the police.

Sigyn bursts onto a crowded Piccadilly Road, ignoring the bewildered stares as she throws her arm out for the first empty cab she sees. It pulls over to the pavement.

“Where to, Ma’am?” the driver asks. He’s Scottish, and there’s a hint of nervousness in his voice when he sees the state of her hair and dress — the flyaways, the torn fabric and the blood.

Sigyn hesitates for the space of a second. “Fourteen Launceston Place,” she says, hurrying to the door. She fumbles with the handle, almost weeping until it springs open.

“Aye, m’lady.”

The door shuts with a snap, and Sigyn curls into herself on the seat as the coach starts forward. And good God, is she terrified. Her hands are the hands of a stranger, and she holds them in front of her. They shake. She cannot make herself believe that what she did was something born of desperation. She has never been trained to fight, the worst she had ever gotten into were the scratching and pushing matches she would sometimes find herself in with other girls when she was younger.

 _How?_ she thinks, panicked. _How did I do that?_

_“Do you remember?”_

“Wait,” Sigyn calls through the grid to the driver.

The coach comes to a stop. “Ma’am?”

“Take me to the Royal Albert Dock. To Sir Harrison’s exhibition. And quickly.”

* * *

The warehouse is closed by the time they arrive. “Are you sure you want to be dropped here, Ma’am?” the driver asks.

“Yes,” Sigyn says, pulling her coat tight around her. She presses a shilling into his hand, and his eyes widen.

“Ma’am, the charge is sixpence —”

“Keep it,” she says firmly, striding to the warehouse door. A chain encircles the handles, and Sigyn sighs at the sight, resigned to finding another way in, before she notices the padlock is undone. Perplexed, worried, she unhooks it. The heavy chain slithers to the ground, and the door creaks open. She slips in.

It is silent inside, and Sigyn pads the length of the warehouse, every sense tingling. When she is halfway down and nothing has stirred, she calls, “Hello?” There is no response, and she clears her throat. “Devils, answer me. I know that you are not unintelligent.”

A low growl comes from the cell to her left. “Tricksy little human figured it out, did it?”

Fire flares into life from several cells at the voice: gas-blue, smokeless, and the tongues of flame burn in a languid, unnatural manner. Sigyn shies back as one of the giants looms at her from the deep shadows, accompanied by an animal stench. She covers her nose and mouth with a hand, and the giant, a female, laughs at her, baring yellow teeth. “Loki,” it says, its voice echoing through the warehouse.

Sigyn hears a scramble from the Godless man’s cell at the end of the building. A lump forms in her throat when he presses himself against the bars; he has the same hungry look in his eyes from the other day.

“Well?” the giantess snarls. “You’re here for him, are you not?”

“That’s enough, Groá,” the other replies, still looking at Sigyn. “Scare her any more, and I will kill you.”

“Try, little one, but you will not succeed.” But the giantess falls silent, and it is then Sigyn notices how much she’s shaking. A gasp bursts from her lips, and she locks her fingers together in the effort to stop the trembles.

“My lady.” The heathen’s voice is soft, gentle. His harsh accent is gone, replaced with an upper-class London one she is more familiar with.

Sigyn looks from her hands to the Godless man. His arms are draped casually through the cell’s gridlock bars. She licks her lips and goes to him, keeping her eyes down and her shoulders hunched. When she arrives, he has retreated; she can only see the vaguest of outlines at the very back of the cell. She again feels the pull she felt when she stood outside this cell a week before. She steps closer to the bars and wraps her fingers around the iron.

“So, you’ve come back,” the Godless man says. “To stare?”

“Something happened to me,” Sigyn said. “Something that I cannot explain.”

“Oh? And why come to me? Why not attend a séance or see a psychic to obtain your answer?”

She will wonder later how he knows of those things. “Because … because of what you said: ‘Do you remember?’ Why did you say that? Why do you know me? How do you?”

The man looms suddenly from the dark, and Sigyn steps back, searching for something behind her to lean against. His red eyes glitter at her reaction, and his icy fingers curl around the bars where hers had been mere seconds ago. “Little _Mi_ _ðgarðian_ ,” he says, the strange word sounding in her ears like a hiss of wind rustling autumn leaves. “You know nothing of the worlds beyond this realm, do you?”

“I know of devils.”

“And of _draugar_?”

“I care not for what it is.”

“It is a plural, lady.”

“I care _not_ ,” Sigyn repeats.

“You come because of the hollow place within you, do you not?” the man says.

The sudden change of subject startles her. “I …” How had he known of that? “Who are you?” she asks sharply.

“That man you were with,” he says, fingers dancing feather-light over the bars in what Sigyn recognises as a tick of annoyance. “Who is he to you? Your lover?”

“My fiancé. Now answer my question. Who are you to ask me after such things as dragons?”

“ _Draugar_. And dearest Groá has told you my name: Loki. I am Loki. I am Sky Walker and I am Oathbreaker. I am He Who Runs with the Wolves, I am Light Bringer. I am the Storm, Master of Flyts, Worldbreaker. I am Trickster.” He gestures at the sign on the bars. “And now I am Hallmund. I have told you of myself, so will you, in return, tell me who you are?”

“I have a feeling you already know.”

“Aye. Your … _fianc_ _é_ called you Sigyn. Have you other names?”

“Not in the fashion of yours.”

Sigyn thinks him to be disappointed. “What happened to you?” he asks. There is sadness in his voice, something layered beneath the question. Sigyn ignores it. Ignores the resulting pang in her heart. She answers the face-value of the question.

“I … I was returning to my home. I was jumped in an alley. I attacked those who would have assaulted me, and left them broken. I have never before been in a physical fight, but yet … I knew what to do.”

“Do your muscles hurt?”

“Yes….”

“They would do. They’re not used to the sorts of movements needed to dispose of fully grown men. Am I correct that your attackers were men?”

“Yes.”

“I will kill them.” The words sound oddly sincere, the breath of a promise lacing them. Sigyn has little trouble believing the Godless man will. “So you’ve come to me for answers,” he says eventually.

“Yes,” Sigyn says for a third time.

He nods to himself. “I can provide them,” he says, “but not now. I do not have the means to.”

“What do you mean?” Sigyn asks, a note of desperation colouring her voice. “You have your words! You —”

“I have to show you,” he growls. “This is something I cannot discuss with you over a fire, and most certainty not whilst the bars of a cage sit between us. No, I have to dig deeper, I have to _convince_ you.”

“Convince me? I just attacked four men and made them run from me with no knowledge as to how I did so,” she says. “I do not need much convincing.”

“Aye, you say that now, but the truth is deeper than you could imagine.” He stands. “I need to convince every fibre of your being, need you to believe me in every corner of your soul. I asked if you remembered me. You don’t, and that is enough to tell me I need to show you. You may not remember me, but your subconscious does.”

“What the _Hell_ is a subconscious?” Sigyn is close to breaking. It was a mistake coming here, foolish of her to think this man could offer her answers of any kind. She feels like sitting on the floor and weeping until her eyes run dry.

“Sigyn.”

The Godless man’s voice is gentle, his tone unpatronising. He is crouched against the bars, as close to her as he can. His red eyes are soft. She looks up at him, fighting back the tears in her eyes.

“I promise you,” he says, “to give you the answers you seek. Trust that I will give you every scrap of information I possess, and trust that I cannot do so now. It will make sense, I swear.” He holds his hand out to her, his palm turned up in an nonthreatening gesture.

Sigyn looks at it. She notices how long his fingers are, how calloused. His skin is littered with scars no thicker than paper pages, hundreds of them overlapping and so giving his skin a pearly-blue sheen. His nails are black, but they are perfectly cut. She takes his hand, and the Godless man squeezes her fingers.

“I’m going to come out,” he says.

Sigyn opens her mouth to ask how, but the lock clicks open, and the door swings on its hinges. The Godless man rises with her, walking around to the door. He stretches upon the threshold, the muscles of his torso sliding smoothly over bone.

Sigyn backs away from him. “How did you do that?” she asks.

His expression falls at her lack of understanding. “I pushed it,” he says. “Sigyn, I asked for your trust. Can you still give that to me?”

“Do you have any more tricks?”

“Aye, several. I will use another now so I may walk in your world as any of you do.”

Sigyn watches opened-mouthed as the colour bleeds from his skin. The blue vanishes like ink running off a wet page, a pale white tone replacing the cobalt. The markings press themselves back into his skin, his nails lighten, and when he opens his eyes, they have turned green.

“My God … what are you?” Sigyn whispers.

Loki smiles a languid grin. “You have seen Wagner’s _Ring of the Nibelungen_ , have you not?” When Sigyn nods, he says, “I am a creature lifted from those writings, a being of immense power mistaken many-a-time as a god.”

Sigyn had forgotten about the giantess until she snorts from the cell next to them. “We’re done here then?” she asks.

“If you so wish it,” Loki says.

The fire she had cupped in her hand vanishes as she grips the cell door, wrenching it off its hinges as easily as Sigyn opens a cupboard. The giantess rolls her neck and cracks her knuckles; when she yawns, Sigyn shies at the mouth of sharp teeth she sees. Loki hugs Sigyn close as the screech of metal echoes from the other cells and the giants within start to file out, hands closing over the fires they hold; they plunge the warehouse back into darkness.

“We’re leaving tonight,” the giantess says, fixing her gaze on Loki. “Are you to come?”

“I’ll be on your heels soon,” Loki says. “I’ll leave in a few hours. I have errands to run first, and a promise to keep.”

“We’ll be swimming north, then.” And then the giantess goes to the door, pulling it back on its rails as easy as anything. The workers in the docks beyond seemingly take no notice of the twenty giants streaming past them.

“They are glamoured,” Loki says quietly when Sigyn raises the issue. “The workers see nothing, hear nothing. To them, the door to this warehouse is still chained shut.” Great splashes echo throughout the warehouse as the giants jump into the sea.

“Will they really swim back to Spitsbergen? They won’t hurt anyone?”

“They won’t hurt anyone so long as no one tries to hurt them. And yes, they’ll swim back. They’re creatures of great stamina. They’ll tire eventually, as all living things do, so they will freeze the sea to drift and sleep upon it before continuing their journey. They’ll land to … Norway’s south — is that the country beneath Spitsbergen?” At Sigyn’s hesitant nod, he says, “They’ll land there and run the rest of the way.”

“But that’s a thousand miles….”

“They’ll be fine; Jotunheim is a planet four times as big as this one.” He releases her and starts to the door. “The glamour won’t hold forever, so we had best leave before it fails.”

“I’m going with you?”

“You wanted answers, didn’t you?” Loki asks her over his shoulder. “I’ll provide them, but it would be harder to convince you of them if you’re on the opposite side of this city, neh?”

“I-it would be,” Sigyn concedes.

“Good, so we’re on equal footing here. I told you too I need show you, and to do that, I need some things.”

“What things?” She feels dubious, and despite Loki’s want for her to trust him, she cannot. Not right away. But there is something within her, something that has broken free since the fight. _Loki_ , that something says. _Loki, Loki, Loki._ It doesn’t matter how much she distrusts him, there is a part of her that isn’t as wary of him as it should be, something that isn’t on edge. And there was a quality to his words, the solid, ancient honesty of a sworn oath when he said he would give her answers. If he does not give her the answers she seeks, then she at least knows she can effectively defend herself.

“I need to show you,” Loki says. “I want you to know what you’re missing, Sigyn, and so I’ll help you. There is a method that I know. I’ll require herbs, organic matter —”

“Witchcraft?” Sigyn asks, her voice high. “I will not have you practising witchcraft upon me, no matter what you promise.”

“Why?” He is truly confused, Sigyn thinks, and she sighs deeply.

“I am a woman of God,” she says.

A look of annoyance flits across his face. She feels defensive at the sight of it.

But he says evenly, “Do you want to fill that hollowness or not?” She is silent, uncertain. Her common sense and heart are doing battle. “I swear that if you come with me,” Loki says, “if you trust me for this night, then I will explain everything.” Again, he offers his hand.

 _Take it_ , the new part of her urges. _Take it. Trust him. Trust yourself._

Her common sense loses the battle, so Sigyn takes Loki’s hand for a second time, and tries to not think about the consequences. _Stupid girl_ , she thinks, she screams at herself. _Stupid._

But the hollow place, Loki had said. He knew about it when she has never told a soul. If anything, she has to know how he knows, has to know why he has haunted her, why she came to him of all people after her near rape and robbery. The pain of not knowing what has been wrong with her for nearly twenty-four years outweighs many of the risks.

 _Trust him_.

* * *

Somewhere along the way, Loki acquires a coat. Filthy and ragged though it is, he cuts a surprisingly handsome figure in it. He blends in well with London’s poorer crowd, his walk purposeful and oozing conviction enough to make others turn their eyes away and part before him. Sigyn finds it easier to trail behind him, spending the time twisting her hands together and wondering over and over what it is she’s doing. Her mother is no doubt worried sick, Theoric too. But the lure of answers is too much for her to ignore, and the growing comfort of being around Loki is its own siren call. When she looks at him, she is filled with a sense of _familiarity_ — the way he walks with his head slightly angled to the left, the tick in his fingers as his arms swing by his sides, the flick of his eyes as he looks back at her. Familiar, all of it, but why it is so sits just out of reach like the forgotten title of a half-remembered melody.

She’s aware of herself, too. Something had happened within her in the alley, for she notices always the constantly shifting changes of the world around her, no matter how infinitesimal. It is as if she _feels_ every person that passes her, every shop door that opens, every cab that rolls on by, every hushed footstep against the snow. It is a state that leaves her exhausted and wishing for nothing more than to move away from the pressing crowd walking along the Thames’ bank.

“Loki,” she finally asks, pushing past a gentleman to walk in step with him, “where are you going?”

“I’m looking,” is the only answer he offers.

“For what? For your herbs? To sightsee?”

“I need to see Harrison first,” Loki says. “Do you know his address?”

Sigyn stares. “ _Harrison?_ ” she finally asks. “Why?”

“I need to get home,” Loki says, shrugging. “He knows where the portal is.”

Betrayal, anger flares in her. “And what of me?”

Loki doesn’t answer her question. “Where does Harrison live?”

“Knightsbridge, but —”

Loki halts, and she almost loses him in the crowd. “I swore I’d help you,” he says. “Stay by my side for a few days, that’s all I ask for. By the time your Christmas comes, the bargain shall be filled.”

It’s the twentieth today. Loki’s asking for five days. Only five days. A small kernel of the anger fades. “And my family …?”

“You’ve seen what I can do,” Loki says, and the tips of his fingers turn blue, the ghosts of his tribal scars showing for the briefest of moments on his skin. “I can glamour their memories so they would never know you were gone.”

“No,” Sigyn says sharply. “I won’t have you breach their privacy so. I’ll go to them tonight, tell them —”

“Tell them what?” Loki asks. “That you’ve aided in the escape of Harrison’s jotnar? That you threw men twice your weight around with little trouble and no training? The truth will be too much for them. I will glamour them, Sigyn. It’s the best way.”

“It does not mean it is a kind thing you suggest.”

“So you would just disappear and leave them hanging without a word,” Loki says flatly. “You would put their privacy above their concern and safety for you? You would have them fall ill with worry for being with me, a stranger and barbarian, for days? And you call me cruel. I can help you. You need me.

“Now, where does Harrison live?”

The arguments are sound, but Sigyn is a stubborn thing. But the only hint of her defiance lays within the tremor of her fists by her sides. “Trevor Street,” she says in a small voice. “Theoric said he was having a party tonight. You cannot go to him tonight and demand him to tell you where the … that _portal_ of yours is.” A spark of inspiration. “There’s still time, Loki, to tell my family.”

“We’re going now.” His voice is blunt. Final. “Sigyn, understand me. I want to go home, and I want to get there as soon as I can. If I talk to Harrison tonight, I can get you what you seek all the more quickly.” He takes her hands in his and says, “If it’s not too forward, my lady,” before he brushes the lightest of kisses over her knuckles.

Sigyn finds it isn’t too forward.

“My lady,” Loki murmurs, “which way is Knightsbridge?”

“West. I’ll hail a cab.”

Five minutes later, they’re bumping along the road. They sit like children in the carriage, with an awkward space and silence between them. Loki plays absently with the ends of his tangled hair. He is looking at her, the expression on his face an echo of the one he wore when they met.

The cab drops them at the top of Trevor Street. Halfway down, the doors to one of the large houses lie open, and every so often, a coach will come to the door, men and woman climbing out with the help of their chauffeurs. After they each briefly speak with a doorman, they are let in.

Loki spies around the corner, pressed flat against the side of a house. He taps his fingers against the wall. “Easy enough,” he says. He cocks his head to the side, a quick little movement like a bird, and he says, “There.” He peels off into an alley that leads into the next street, leaving Sigyn little choice but to follow him and even less of an idea as to what his plan is.

“Loki?”

She hears the rumble of a coach, the clop of horses’ hooves. Loki’s at the end of the alley, a finger to his lips. “Stay here,” he mouths.

Sigyn doesn’t want to, not after what happened earlier. She opens her mouth to tell him so, but Loki’s gone, dashing into the middle of the street just as the coach passes the mouth of the alley.

The driver barely manages to stop in time, yelling as he pulls on the horse’s reins. Loki is unperturbed by the driver’s anger, his gaze fixed on the coach’s door. It opens a few seconds later, and a voice shouts, “Why the hell have you stopped, man?”

“T-there’s —”

“Useless. Useless! I shall never again hire your company’s cabs, mark my words!” A man pokes his head from the carriage, and the snarl on his face dies when he sees Loki standing idly in the street, rocking back and forth on his bare heels. “Bloody homeless,” Sigyn hears the man mutter. “Move.”

Loki does nothing.

“Driver, run him down.”

The driver shakes his head. He’s nothing more than a youth beneath his coat.

“Do I have to ask again? We’re late, and I will not be later because of this … this _bellend_.”

“Move,” the driver squeaks to Loki. “Please move.”

“No,” Loki says simply. He clasps his hands behind his back.

“I’ll call the police down on you,” the man threatens.

“And all I have to do is jump over to the next district and then the police of this district, the ones that will hear your call, will be useless,” Loki says primly.

The man makes a noise of disgust before he jumps from the coach, his face turning red.

“Peter, please,” a woman calls from inside. She too exits and hurries to her husband’s side, grasping his arm and trying to pull him back into the coach. “Please, _please_.”

“Are you going to Harrison’s party?” Loki asks.

The man’s face drains of colour as quickly as it rose. “How do you know that? Are you stalking me?” he blusters, holding his wife close. He looks at Loki’s ragged loincloth, at his bare chest and dirt-caked feet, his unkempt hair. “Who the _Hell_ do you think you are?”

“You’ve the nerve to swear at me? _Me?_ ” There is real anger in Loki’s voice now. “You want to know who I am? I’m the bloody prince of Asgard, that’s who.”

“What —?”

“You’re not going anymore.” Loki clicks his fingers in the man’s face. Sigyn sees an acid green spark jump between Loki’s fingers, and when it vanishes, he says, “You’re to give your names to me. Then you’re to go home, and never question why you gave them. Either of you.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” the man says promptly, every bit of his aggression vanishing like a soap bubble popped. “I am Mr. Peter Taylor, and this is my wife, Josephine.”

“Good,” Loki says. Then he smiles in a wolf-like manner as he slides aside. “God bless.”

“And a Merry and Holy Christmas to you too, Highness.” Then Mr. and Mrs. Taylor climb back into the coach, and the driver, looking confused, sets off down the street.

“What did you do?” Sigyn asks sharply as she comes from the alley.

“I didn’t harm them,” Loki assures her. “We need to enter Harrison’s household, and we need to do so subtly.”

“Taking their names is all very well,” Sigyn points out, “but how are we to get past the door? Surely the doorman knows each of these people.”

“That’s easy enough,” Loki says. “I’ll place a glamour over his mind much like I did Taylor and his wife. It’s a harmless bit of magic, I promise.” He touches her face with the very tips of his fingers. “Will you trust me, Sigyn?”

Trust. It’s what Theoric had asked of her.

Sigyn hesitates, then nods. “Very well. If you need Harrison’s cooperation, then very well.”

“It’s for a good cause.” He takes his hand away and, in the middle of the street, _changes_. The rags vanish in a heartbeat, and they are replaced by a sharply tailored tuxedo. His hair smooths back from his face, soft and free of snarls, and the grime vanishes from his skin. There is a scarf around his neck, and a duelling cane in his hand. Sigyn’s heart skips a beat at the sight of him. He’s undeniably beautiful, his cheekbones high and sharp, his lips thin, his eyes clever.

“Well,” Loki says, “you need to change as well.”

Sigyn looks down at herself, at the dress she forgot was ripped and bloodstained. It is hardly something suitable for a party.

“Before you say anything,” Loki says, “yes, I can fix it.”

A green light shimmers over her, and Sigyn gasps as her dress is made into something fuller, the new detail jumping out. The cobalt-blue of the dress darkens to a rich and deeper colour, something that seems pure and makes every other colour she can see dull in comparison. Her hair is redone, woven into a high bun and spun with drops of glass. She touches the dress, starting when her finger dips through it and into air.

“I cannot change your true clothes,” Loki says, “but I can hide them. The spell will act as if the fabric were really there —” he waves a hand by her skirt to demonstrate, and it folds out of the way just before his fingers make contact, “— and it won’t fail until I command it too. Just be careful not to brush too closely to any walls or tables.”

“I understand,” Sigyn says.

“Then let’s go.” He offers her his arm, and Sigyn takes it. She can feel the tatty coat beneath her fingers.

They walk to Harrison’s house arm in arm. When they mount the steps, the doorman raises an eyebrow at their lack of a coach.

“Sir? I’m afraid I do not recognise you….”

“We are Icelandic,” Loki says with a faint Scandinavian accent. “New to London. We received invitation to this party two days ago.”

“Your name, Sir?”

“Taylor.”

Sigyn knows the name is not Icelandic in the least, but it seems the doorman doesn’t. He nods to himself as he looks at the list in his hand.

“Tell Sir Harrison we’re here, won’t you?” Loki says.

“Mr. and Mrs. Taylor …” he says. “Yes … I’ll make certain Sir Harrison knows you’re here.”

Loki bows slightly at the waist and, with Sigyn’s fingers in his, they step into the party.

* * *

Theoric has spent the night searching for Sigyn. He curses himself for letting her go off alone so close to dark. He has gone around Kensington and its adjacent suburbs, walked the paths of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens calling for her. He has sent as many men as he can spare from his household staff to help widen the area of search. But the truth of the matter is that London is a big place. His biggest fear is that she’s been attacked, kidnapped. A parasol is little of a weapon.

After three hours, he’s gone to Kensington’s local police.

“A Miss Sigyn Rosettia?” the constable asks.

Theoric’s patience is running thin. He’s been sent to five different desks and received no news of any kind except some mumbled promises to put out a notice of missing persons should she not be found soon. “She’s of middling height,” he says tersely. “Curly blonde hair, goldish brown eyes, has freckles. She was wearing a blue dress.”

The constable scratches his cheek. “Heard nothing ‘bout a woman matching that description,” he says. “We’ve recently installed these new telephones see; come all the way in from America.” He pats a machine on the wall next to him a third of Theoric’s height. “I can talk to the police at the nearby stations and ask if they’ve seen anyone.”

“That would be good of you,” Theoric says, crossing his arms.

He’s not moved by the constable’s obvious excitement using the telephone, but halfway through the dialling process, there’s a commotion at the station’s door. Theoric’s head snaps around, but he’s disappointed when all the officers bring in are two men, struggling against the policemen’s grips.

“There was a devil in her, I’m telling you!” shouts a man with blood on his teeth. “It’s her yer wanting, not us! We’re innocent!”

“Ha! And my grandmother’ll rise from the grave by Christmas morn,” one of the officers grunts. “Shut yer faces.”

“A woman?” Theoric asks, shooting from his chair and blocking the officers’ ways. “Where did this happen? What did she look like? Tell me!”

“I ein’t wanting to dwell on it,” the second man whimpers. “She looked so easy, just struggling to walk in the snow. Rich pickin’, yer know?”

Theoric grasps his shirt. “ _What did she look like?_ ” he roars.

“Blonde, Sir,” the man yelps. “Prettiest thing I ever laid my eyes on, Sir. Blue dress. God she moved like the wind. Ran off down to Piccadilly. She was mad.” He finishes in a whisper.

Theoric’s stomach has disappeared into the floor. The officers bully the men past him; he hardly notices when the man’s shirt is torn from his grip.

“Ah, shame that,” the constable says from behind him, dropping the telephone’s mouth piece onto its cradle. “Another day, my beauty.”

Theoric barely suppresses a snarl as he leaves. He’s sure that the men described Sigyn, but what they had said about her moving like a demon, that she was mad…. Outside the station, he runs a hand through his hair. “Bradford,” he says to his footman waiting at the bottom of the steps, “continue the search. Look along Piccadilly Road.”

“Yes, Sir.”

* * *

Sir Donal Harrison is a collector of rare things. His expeditions and the treasures he brings back with him often make the broadsheets. Lady Rosettia thought it merely a matter of time before he discovered something that would elevate him through the centuries. “I bet he’ll be the one to find a Pharaoh’s tomb,” she said to Sigyn. “Knowing him, it wouldn’t be unlikely.”

“Impossible, Mother,” Sigyn sighed. “You know they were all robbed by the ancients. There’s nothing left of any of them, and there won’t be anything of Egypt left if you keep buying mumia as you do.”

“You know it’s good for my headaches, dear; Doctor Emerson is quite insistent I take it.”

Sigyn had hardly wanted to say she felt like Emerson would prescribe anything so long as it kept her mother coming back to pay him more visits.

But Harrison had outdone himself recently. After he had brought Loki and his kin to London in irons, he had had the main find of his Roman dig in the Lake District transported to London. The piece had arrived the same day he had returned from Spitsbergen.

“It’s fate!” he proclaims to the party goers. “God has granted me success in my endeavours this year. A true Christmas miracle.” There are answering titters from the crowd. Next to her, Loki scowls at Harrison over the top of his sixth champagne flute. He mutters something that sounds foul in a foreign language.

The party is a fabulous affair. The ground floor of Harrison’s house has been draped with Christmas décor, great lengths of holly and pine branches wound about the banisters of the grand staircases, silver candles burning in silver holders, glass baubles hung from every chandelier, and a tree twice the height of the Rosettia’s nestled between the staircases. Beneath the tree, more than a hundred guests mingle, talking over flutes of champagne and vintage wines that serving men deliver to them on silver platters.

At the back of the house is the ballroom, and it is packed with couples stopped in their dancing to listen to Harrison who stands on a dais at the head of the room. He wears a suit that is tailored even more sharply than Loki’s, his hands encased in white cotton gloves, and his hair shining with oil.

“Thank you for coming tonight, ladies and gentlemen, my friends,” Harrison says just as Loki takes a seventh drink. “This year has been full of blessings and surprises. Gladstone is still Prime Minister, Tahiti was annexed by the French, Cologne Cathedral has finally been completed after six and a half centuries, and I have discovered a new species of giant.” The sound of Loki’s glass shattering in his fist is drowned by the applause in the room.

“But I have one more achievement to celebrate before the year closes,” Harrison says when the room is silent once again. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have with me tonight, brought all the way from the Lake District, this most exquisite Roman mosaic. I present to you: the Raven.”

The cloth is drawn away, and Sigyn cannot help but gasp with the other ladies of the crowd as the mosaic is uncovered. It is a huge thing — a piece of floor ten by ten feet upon which is a pagan man, naked but for his woad tattoos. He is dark of hair and carries with him a bow as tall as he is. In his other hand are arrows fletched with black feathers. _Corvis magam Britannia_ are the words surrounding him — The Raven Witch of Britannia.

“It’s beautiful,” Sigyn says as she claps.

Harrison seems to feed off the applause of the crowd. He looks down at them all, smiling in a superior fashion as they admire his prize. “Oxford scholars believe it to be a work from the first few decades of the Roman invasion of Britain,” Harrison says when the applause dies down. “Surely this discovery is a keystone into proving the Raven was, at the very least, based off a real person.”

“Who’s he?” Loki asks, gesturing to the mosaic.

“He supposedly helped hold off the invasion of Britain’s north, leading the armies that dealt Rome some of her biggest defeats,” Sigyn says. “Of course, he’s not much mentioned in the ancient sources because of the embarrassment it caused, so some people believe he is more of an idealistic figure along the lines of Arthur.”

“Sweet Sigyn, I do not know who Arthur is, either.”

“I should recommend you read Geoffrey of Monmouth’s works, then; there’s a lot to say.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Harrison says, raising a hand to stifle the applause. “Now please, continue with your enjoyment. Or come and have a closer look at my Raven. Thank you.”

The musicians seated in the room’s south start to play as the floor is cleared.

“A dance, my lady?”

Sigyn looks around, bewildered when she finds Loki’s hand outstretched to her. “You have offered me your hand many times this evening, Sir,” she says, taking it.

“I like doing so,” he replies, drawing her close. She shivers when he places a hand on her waist and holds the other high. “A waltz, my lady?”

“Can you dance one?” Sigyn challenges. “I am most accomplished.”

“And so to battle,” Loki says as a faster beat begins to play.

Sigyn is swept away as Loki starts to lead, furrowing her brow as she matches his every step. A slow, steady start to warm them both up. Loki smiles when he realises her skill, and he speeds up. Sigyn keeps in step with him. They fly around the floor, their gazes locked as they dance. Sigyn hears people talking of them, feels their eyes upon them with that new sensitivity she has come to.

“Who are they?” several wonder.

_We are glorious._

They are broken off when someone cries out; they have trodden on Loki’s broken wine glass.

“Cecelia!” a man exclaims.

Sigyn is panting, and she wipes stray hairs from her brow. “I have not danced like that for a long time.”

“You enjoyed it?” Loki asks as he leads her into the crowd. A flick of his fingers diverts what attention was on them away so they may talk in privacy.

“Yes,” Sigyn says, honest.

“Good.” He lets go of her hand and says in her ear, “Stay here. I’ll talk with Harrison now.”

“Am I not coming with you?” she asks fiercely.

“I’ll be quick; it’s hardly worth coming with me,” he replies. “I promise. And then we’ll be gone.” He kisses her cheek gently. “You are a wonderful dancer,” he says before he disappears into the crowd.

Her fingers stray to her cheek. The spot where his lips touched is warm. She is surprised at how she smiles.

* * *

The noise of the party quietens as he climbs the marble stairs three at a time. Harrison has retreated to an upper room, and he cocks his head to the side, magic snaking from his fingers to locate the man. A flutter of response comes from the end of the main hall, and he pads forward, the thick carpets muffling his tread. There is a door is made of oak, firmly shut and locked from the inside.

“… like that, do you?”

Harrison’s voice. He presses closer to the door.

“Mm, yes. I like that very much, Sir. I love it when you play with my tits, Sir. I pine when I’m away from you.”

“Do you close your eyes and imagine my hands at your teats when you’re alone at night? That it is my fingers between your legs? Do you _moan_ for me like the filthy little whore you are?”

“Yes, oh yes, oh my lord, Sir, I —”

He has no patience to unlock the door, so he merely breaks the handle free and shoves it open with a foot. He finds Harrison sitting in an office, a painted whore astride his lap with her tiny little breasts by his face. She screams when he barges in, and Harrison shoves her to the floor.

He doesn’t give a damn about the female. “Go,” he growls at her.

She is quick to obey, gathering her discarded clothes and scampering out.

He looks Harrison up and down, lip curled.

“Who the hell are you?” Harrison barks. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

“I’m certainly not here to take your cheap sluts from you,” he says. “I’m here to talk.” He slams the door shut and locks it with a charm; he also soundproofs the room.

“To talk?” Harrison says, wary. “You’re here to demand money? Take my possessions and steal my glory for yourself? Are you Martin’s man?”

“I’m _hurt_ that you don’t remember me, surprised even,” he says, prowling around Harrison’s desk. The human tries to rise to his feet, but he pins him in his chair with a foot. Harrison chokes under the weight.

“You were so proud of me,” he says in a languid voice. “You shot me. Here …” he touches his shoulder, and then his leg “… and here.”

Then Harrison’s eyes widen in recognition. “You,” he breathes. “The giant!”

“Aye, _me_ ,” he snarls. He lets the jotun through, the glamour of his clothes fading away to be replaced by frost giant battle-wear — hard iron grafted into his skin, uru sheaths encasing his claws, paint thick with his blood swirling over his skin. A great fur lies around his shoulders, caked with frost and seeping cold. He shows Harrison his teeth: sharp, wolf-like, brutal and animal.

“You can talk,” Harrison says in the tiniest voice he has before heard. “You are intelligent.”

“The things I know would turn your mind to ash, mortal,” he says. “My patience is limited this night, so I shall be blunt — I am in need of your ship.”

“ _Thelxiope_? Why?”

“That,” he growls, “is none of your fucking concern.” He pulls his leg back only to kick Harrison hard in the chest. Although he took care to pull the blow, Harrison’s ribs break. His scream is unheard by the party-goers downstairs, deadened by the spell.

“You think to own me?” he roars. “Parade me about?” He grabs Harrison from the chair and lifts him high, snarling in his face. “I am no one’s to be owned. Not anymore. Too long I have been owned, played, and I shall not be belittled and pimped by some _mortal_!” He throws Harrison into a bookshelf, and another scream is ripped from him as his leg breaks.

He is frothing at the mouth like a bull as he advances on Harrison. _Biblical_ is one of the words he has learnt over the past days; he has little doubt in his mind he looks it to Harrison. “You have but the wisp of an idea of how dangerous I am,” he says. “I will bring storms of fire, Harrison, and it’s your fault. I couldn’t cross that portal by myself for my lack of human blood. But in your company I could. You have led me to the final piece I need to end _everything_ you know. For that you have my undying thanks.”

“Please …” Harrison whispers hoarsely.

“Your ship, Harrison,” he says.

“Let me live, and I will give you anything. My fortune, my titles. Anything you wish for, but please, let me live.”

He is silent for a moment, but finally drops Harrison. Harrison howls like a wounded dog when he hits the floor.

“As you wish,” he says, striding around the desk. There is a telephone on the wall behind it, and he cranks it into life before dialling a number in one of Harrison’s ledgers. He ignores the human as he crawls to the door, knowing whatever efforts he will make to escape him are worth nothing. He drums his fingers on the machine.

The other end finally connects. “Yessir?”

“ _Thelxiope_ is to be prepared for departure within the hour,” he says in a perfect imitation of Harrison’s voice.

“But Sir, she —”

“I want it _done_ ,” he says, scraping his claws down the telephone’s side before he slams the receiver down.

Harrison is begging for help by the time he throws him onto the desk. He leans over the human, looking at him intently. “Are you scared?”

Harrison doesn’t seem to hear him, too busy praying to his God. “… Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven …”

“Oh, shut up,” he snaps. “Your God cannot hear you. I can, and I am not a god of mercy.

“You want to live, Donal Harrison,” he croons, “and so you shall. But before I go, know one more thing.” He leans close to Harrison’s ear, savouring for the briefest of moments his sharp, terrified pants. “Ego sum vestri corvus veneficae,” he breathes before he crushes his mind.

* * *

“Did I not say I’d be quick?” Loki asks.

He is waiting for her outside the bathroom, reaching forth to readjust the front of her petticoat. “You certainly kept your word about that,” Sigyn says, smiling shyly at him. “Did Harrison agree?”

“Most amenably. _Thelxiope_ is ours to use at our leisure,” Loki says. He adjusts the non-existent cuff links on his sleeves and says, “Shall we be off, then?”

“Yes, yes, let’s be off.” She yawns, and her eyes fall on a clock on the mantle piece. “Oh, it’s a half past one!”

“Hush,” Loki says, “the night is young.”

“Well you have little sense of sleep, then,” she retorts. “I’m exhausted.”

“Pity…. _Thelxiope_ ’s leaving in an hour. You’ve come with me, and so it is only right that I deliver my promise now.”

Sigyn’s sleepiness vanishes. “Now?” she asks.

“Unless you would prefer to come with me and know later?”

“Go to Norway?”

“Beyond,” Loki says. “To where I was born.”

“And where is that?”

Loki’s gaze becomes unfocused. “It’s a planet … the units of measurement I know are called _unditht_ _ökk_ , and my planet is forty-three of those away.”

“And how far is that?”

“In your miles …” He frowns. “One quintillion sixty three quadrillion or there abouts?”

“… Oh.” She fidgets, struggling to imagine such a number. “What’s it like?”

“Cold,” he says. “Hence why we’re so cold. It’s a free floating planet, so we have no years, only nights. We have no seasons either, and Norns help us if we drift too close to a star.” He rubs his temple. “So it’s always night, always dark. You can understand why … Earth was a desirable place to visit.”

Sigyn nods. “It would be terrible.”

“Aye, so we escaped to other planets, other realms. You see, that’s what you don’t realise about the universe yet: it’s so _big_ , so full of possibility. In one moment you could be stranded upon a planet like mine, and the next travel to one covered in lush rainforests, or sitting on dunes of purple sands and listening to the ka’lacha birds call to each other. I know of a planet whose music is so beautiful that it it can bring forth any emotion in a listener with the merest flick of a finger. I know of cities made of gold and obsidian and glass, of planets hollowed in their centres to make way for Yggdrasil’s best forges, planets where dragons are sent to die for the fumes.”

“Dragons? And how do you get them there? More portals?”

“By a bridge — Bifröst.”

“Bee-frost?”

“Yes. In the crudest sense, it’s a tool able to compress space. Here.” He holds his palm out. Touching his fingertips, he says, “This is where I have started, and I want to get to here.” He touches the heel of his palm. “Bifröst is able to close those distances, folding space on itself so you can travel hundreds of _unditht_ _ökk_ in a mere moment.” He curls his fingers inwards, touching them to his palm. “It’s wonderful. It’s freedom.”

“We could go anywhere?” Sigyn asks in a quiet voice. “At any time we wanted?”

“Yes.” Excitement shines on his face. “Please.”

“My family … my life …”

“I can glamour them. All of them. Free you.”

_But I am free._

But her heart yearns for it. It is a yearning that she had experienced as a child, desperate to see the world beyond England’s boarders. Her mother had taken her to Italy when she was twelve, to Milan for a holiday. Excitement, curiosity, longing, bite at her.

She takes a breath. She has seen glamouring at work, and it seems as harmless as Loki promises. Perhaps it would not be as bad as she imagines, unlike the stories of the mental wards she has heard. “You can glamour them?”

Loki’s expression sees to unfurl at her words; he had been carrying a tension she hadn’t seen. “Yes.”

“I … I have an aunt in France,” Sigyn says, still fidgeting. “If it’s as harmless as you say it is, could you perhaps … tell them I decided to spend Christmas with her? That I wanted a holiday before my marriage?”

“Of course,” Loki says. Sigyn doesn’t miss how his shoulders slump at her words. He runs a hand over her hair, fingers trailing from her jaw to her shoulder. “I have a promise to keep,” he says after a while. “I’ll collect the materials I need to help you.”

Outside Harrison’s house, Loki snaps his fingers, another spark of green dancing within them. They must only wait a few moments before a cab is coming up the street, the driver sleepy eyed and blinking in the effort to stay awake. “Piccadilly, please,” Loki says.

“Yer what, Sir? That’s down the road.”

“Go to Piccadilly and wait there for my return. I’ll be but fifteen minutes.”

“Fine, fine…. Where then, Sir?”

“Millwall.”

“As you wish, Sir.”

As they move, Sigyn dozes upon the seat, drunk with something she cannot put a name to. She barely notices Loki climb out two minutes later.

* * *

Theoric returns home only when Bradford takes him there despite his wishes. “Sir, forgive me,” he says when he opens the carriage door. “It’s past one o’clock. You cannot search for her when you yourself are exhausted.”

“Bradford, do not test my patience,” Theoric says, dangerous. “The search will continue.”

“Sir, you must _sleep_. The horses need rest.”

“Then fetch fresh ones. The chestnut pair.”

“They’ve not yet been broken in —”

“Then I’ll continue on foot.”

“For your own hea—”

Theoric leaves the carriage, summoning every bit of his impressive height to tower over Bradford. “I am not leaving Sigyn,” he says. “You’re lucky I’m not dismissing you from your position. But if you insist on your foolishness, then I will have little choice but to tell you to pack your bags.”

Bradford’s head drops. “I understand, Sir,” he says in a small voice.

“Sir.”

Theoric looks away from Bradford to his butler, Jefferson. He has been in the service of his family since Theoric’s earliest memories, and the man is like a second father to him. Theoric gives Jefferson a nod. “Mr. Jefferson.”

“My lord, Bradford is not at fault. I told him to return you home after midnight should your search be unsuccessful.”

A lump forms in Theoric’s throat. “You?” he asks.

“Indeed, my lord. Your best interests lie in my heart. Exhausting yourself will not help your lady. If you insist on fronting the search yourself, then you must be fit to do so.” Jefferson places a hand on Theoric’s shoulder. “Rest, lad,” he says in a quieter voice.

He must herd Theoric upstairs to his bed, assuring him that he will wake him at dawn so he may continue the search.

“The police have been notified,” Theoric muttered to himself as he rolled over in bed. “They’ll find her. She’ll be found….”

It is a dog barking in the distance that wakes Theoric a bare hour later. He groans, rubbing his eyes. He flinches when he catches movement from the corner of his eye, and he sits up, squinting into the dark. The curtains are drawn, the window shut. The movement’s come from within the room.

“Hello?” he asks. His hand creeps to his bedside drawer. If there were a stranger in here, then it is foolish of them to let Theoric draw out the pistol.

“Please.”

Theoric jerks around, kneeling on the mattress and the pistol pointed towards the corner from which the voice issued. His eyes are adjusting to the dark still, but he sees a shape darker than the wall behind.

“Who are you?” he barks.

“That’s the third time I’ve been asked that question in the last twelve hours,” the intruder says. The curtains twitch back a fraction. The intruder’s hair is black, long and tangled. His coat is falling to pieces, and within the dark recesses of his eyes, there is a green glitter. “Three times the same question, and answering it grows tedious.” There is hate in the man’s voice.

“I demand you tell me your name,” Theoric says as he climbs from the bed. “Why are you here?”

Silence. Then: “Theoric Valkenson,” the man says. “Captain of the elite Crimson Hawks.”

“The Crimson what?”

The man barks a laugh of disbelief, incredulity. “Not one, but two who don’t remember,” he says. “How wonderful. But how bitterly disappointing it is that you will not know for what crime you die.”

“Make sense of what you speak, or I shall not hesitate to shoot you.”

“Were you not to shoot me for trespassing?” the man asks with a purr. “Or for keeping close your fiancée?”

Theoric’s mouth turns dry, and rage sweeps through his heart. Fear sweeps through his heart. “Where is she?” he asks in a voice of quiet venom. “Tell me.”

“Perhaps if you put your gun down.”

Theoric has little choice but to lower the weapon.

“She is where she belongs,” the man says, stepping around the side of the bed and backing Theoric into the wall. “She belongs with me, Captain.” And then he raises his arm, raises the knife that Theoric had not seen. It is the wink of the weapon he notices of all things, and his breath makes a funny jump in his throat when the blade buries itself in his chest. The pain engulfs him then, but he does not cry out. He only stares wide-eyed at the black-haired man as he retreats to the door, his movements full of lethal precision. When he opens the door, Theoric sees the hall. Jefferson lies outside, the white of his shirt dark with blood. Theoric gropes for the pistol he dropped, determined to do something.

“You will not take her from me again,” the man says in a low voice before the door snaps shut. The dog stops barking seemingly in the same instant.

The knife is still buried in Theoric’s chest. He remembers a sliver of an autobiography he once read, the account of an acting officer in the Crimean War. When stabbed, it was ideal to leave the instrument of puncture in the wound to halt blood flow. Every part of him wants to pull the knife free, but he ignores it, doing his best not to cry out as he searches for the pistol with his fingertips. Regardless of the knife, blood pours down his chest, and he screams through his teeth when he overbalances, falling sideways onto the floor. He curls into a ball, panting as tears fall into the carpet.

 _Sigyn_ , he thinks. She is with that madman, trapped in the vile bastard’s company. He can’t let her stay by his side, he can’t stand the thought of what she would be put through. The man is violent, malicious.

When he opens his eyes, he sees a dark lump under the bed. The pistol. He pushes himself up as best he can, reaching for it. When he takes it in hand, he fires.

* * *

Loki comes back after ten minutes, joining her in the cab which moves off when the door closes. The sudden movement jolts her awake.

“My family?”

“They’re not expecting your return until February.”

Two months. She has two months.

“What’s in there?”

He has a bag over his shoulder, and he shows her the contents.

“What’s this for?” In her hand is a plant clipping. Purple-green bell-flowers tip the clipping, the leaves are broad, and, nestled close to the stem, are berries — some a shiny black, and others unripe green. Sigyn drops it at once. “That’s belladonna!” she hisses. “Why do you have that?”

“You said you wanted answers,” Loki says. “The belladonna will provide them.” He has other things in the bag, Sigyn sees now. There are bottles in the bag, clear and filled with milky opium latex, and another with animal fat, and flowers — wolfsbane, hemlock, henbane …

“How throughly do you mean to poison me?” Sigyn asks. For the first time that night, fear clutches her tight. Real fear.

“I will not kill you,” Loki says gently. “These plants will bring forth madness, hallucinations. Memories.”

“Memories?” Sigyn whispers. “What memories?”

“Of who we were before. Memories that will fill the hollowness within you.”

They find _Thelxiope_ moored at Millwall in Canary Wharf. She’s a steamboat suited to sea voyages, a hundred and fifty feet long and swarming with crew. The docks are otherwise deserted at this time of night, they the only two things to move amongst the boxes and crates. But as per Harrison’s instructions, _Thelxiope_ is ready to leave, smoke from her chimneys filling the night air. Loki guides Sigyn to the gangplank.

The crew on board is toiling away and don’t notice them at first.

“Sir, I —” The first mate takes in the sight of them, and he scowls. “And you are?”

“The captain,” Loki says. A haze of green surrounds the first mate, and he stumbles where he stands, his eyes heavy and drooping. “Tell your crew to set sail to Spitsbergen, and that we are not to be disturbed.”

“Aye, Captain,” the first mate mumbles to his chest. “I’m Mik Owen.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Sir,” Sigyn says, dipping into a small curtsy.

Owen dips his head to her. “Ma’am.”

“Come now,” Loki says, tugging gently on her elbow.

Sigyn cannot help but look back over her shoulder at Owen. He walks a little drunkenly, hanging onto anything he can as he shouts orders at the crew. From Loki’s fingers, more of that green mist is pouring. It entwines around the crew above deck, snakes between the cracks of the ship’s plates. Every time it comes into contact with one of the crew, he sags for a heartbeat before carrying on with his task as if nothing had happened. Soon, they have all been touched by Loki’s magic.

“What are you doing to them?” Sigyn asks, watching with a fascination one of the cabin boys shaking his head before running down to the prow.

“Harrison … may have been a bit unclear as to who they would be carrying,” Loki says.

He opens a door to below decks, inviting Sigyn to go first. There is lush carpet lining this hallway, and Sigyn follows the tongue until she comes to the captain’s cabin. It is a work of art, the metal of the other parts of the ship covered by lacquered mahogany and oil paintings. The back of the room is a window, the glass panels distorting the light of London’s gas lamps into dull circles of yellow. Beneath the window is a bay stuffed with pillows and throws. Plump couches and ottomans litter the floor, and potted plants sit on two tables at either side of the room, another smaller one on the desk at the cabin’s centre. It is loaded with writing materials — fountain pens and pencils; thick, creamy paper and a half-dozen paperweights and rulers of a range of different lengths; there too are envelopes, inkwells, navigations tools, and many other things Sigyn can’t name.

She winces on Harrison’s behalf when Loki sweeps the lot of it to the floor and empties the contents of his bag onto the tabletop. He sits behind the desk just as the ship’s whistle blows to signal its departure. “Sleep, Sigyn,” Loki says. “I will be a few hours.”

“You should sleep too. It’s two o’clock,” Sigyn points out.

“Not tired, remember?” Loki asks, his lips quirking into a smile.

“Then you truly are a beast of the night.”

“Ouch, that hurt,” Loki teases as he picks off leaves and berries from the belladonna clipping. “There’s a bedroom two doors down to the left. I’ll come and wake you when it’s ready.”

“And it won’t poison me?”

“It’ll be an ointment. If you ingest it you will die, but when it’s absorbed into the skin … it isn’t deadly.”

Not deadly, but not without effect.

“I’ll stay,” she says.

“Do you not trust me?” Loki asks, looking up at her from his work.

She’s not sure anymore, so she says nothing and retreats to the bay window. She bundles the pillows and throws around her, settling to watch London slide past. Cold radiates from the glass, and she burrows into her body warmth. The window shimmers then, green illuminating the glass from within. She sighs at the warmth it casts, humming as the tendrils in turn curl around her body; they blaze with heat. “Thank you,” she whispers, her eyes closing.

But she doesn’t sleep. She can hear Loki behind her, shifting through the ingredients, cutting things, crushing them, the crackle of a fire. If he succeeds, if he will drive away the hollowness … A sudden want to keep it overwhelms her so much so she twitches. What if something goes wrong? What if the hollowness is there for a reason? God did everything for a reason.

But then the terrifying thought of the hollowness hiding nothing invades her, if it is just the way she is and nothing can be done about it. The equally freezing thought of knowing too much grips her a second later.

The worry keeps her awake for long enough that she sees the dawn.

* * *

“Sigyn.”

She stirs, reaching a shaking hand forward. “Hmm?”

“It’s ready.”

She scrambles upright, ignoring how her body aches with the need to rest.

“You look terrible,” Loki says.

“Thanks,” Sigyn grouches, scratching her head vigorously.

“I didn’t mean … The ointment’s ready.”

A cooking pot sits on the desk now. Everything else has been cleared away. Sigyn rises, shuffles forward. The ointment at the bottom is thick, yellow in colour and slightly see through. _From the animal fat_ , she thinks belatedly. All in all, it’s a small thing, two spoons of it if not less.

“Lay on the floor,” Loki says. “Just in front of the desk will do.”

Sigyn’s legs shake as she does as he says, her hands palm down and her bare feet pointed. Loki sits to the side, the pot in his lap.

“Sigyn,” he says, his voice low, “you will not gain anything if you are not willing to sacrifice anything. This goes beyond the witchcraft you spoke of earlier. This is deeper magic, primal magic. It is rough and cruel and this will not be easy. It will hurt.”

“I want to be whole,” she says, determined. The cold feet she experienced last night is nowhere to be found. She has made up her mind. “Do it.”

“Brave girl,” Loki says. There is admiration upon his face. Eagerness too.

He applies the ointment to her hands and feet, to the expanse of her throat and her forehead. It feels uncomfortable, sightly cold and sticky. Nothing happens for a long while. Sigyn’s face burns. If this is some kind of trick, some elaborate scheme … she doesn’t know what she will do. She is in the middle of the North Sea, surrounded by a crew who will overpower her through sheer numbers alone if Loki wishes it.

 _Stupid girl_ , she thinks again. Tears gather in her eyes. _You_ _’ve just met Loki. It’s been less than a day —_

She cries out as a burst of light explodes behind her eyes.

“Sig?” Loki asks.

“I …”

The belladonna takes her.

* * *

Despite Loki’s assurance, Sigyn is convinced the belladonna poisons her. For the first day, she remains curled into herself on the floor, the carpet thick with her tears and vomit as she battles with herself against the pain grating behind her eyes. She screams at one point, she thinks, but she cannot recall.

The second day comes, and Sigyn is ravenous. But there is nothing to eat, and although her stomach cries for food, she knows she will throw up anything she eats. She prays to herself, to God, to anyone who might be listening. She thinks she remembers Loki cradling her head for several hours, murmuring to her in some tongue she cannot understand. Visions plague her, shapeless blotches of brightest colour against stark blackness which are inversed a second later. It makes her head throb all the more, and she twists in her skirts, begging for relief, for the assault on her mind to stop.

By the third day, her fingers are bleeding for how she has scratched at the carpet. She tears at her hair, uncaring for the pain as she rips a long lock free. She slurs nonsense. Every second feels like an hour, every hour like a day. “Please,” she says. “Please….”

She remembers nothing of the fourth day — the pain has blurred every waking moment into one.

When the dawn of the fifth day comes, Christmas Day, Sigyn is mad for relief.

“Make it stop,” she howls. “Loki!”

He hasn’t left her side, pacing the cabin, holding her, lighting the circle of candles that surround them, but all the while he has been determined. “I’m here,” he murmurs.

“Help me,” she begs. “Loki, help me. Hjálpaðu mér.”

His breath quickens. “Sig,” he says. “Sig….”

“I am burning,” she says. “I am burning.” She curls upon a scream, shaking with sobs. Spit falls from her lips. “I’m _burning_ —” And there is something terrible in her head, something clawing to get out.

“Love,” Loki says, holding her tight. “It’s almost over, it’s almost over —”

“ _Loki!_ ”

Images flash through her mind, so fast she barely has time to see them. A jackdaw she chased through cow paddocks when she was a girl. The grey buildings of London as she first saw them as a girl of seven. Sweet string music. A celebration where she reaches for red paper confetti. There is blood on her hands, dripping from her fingers. The jackdaw a raven. A scream. Children staring at her. A wolf in a snare. A sword flashing in the sun. A cabin. A crown of flowers in her hair. A kiss on her lips. Moss between her toes. The scent of pine. Splinters in her fingers. Boys, twin boys held tight in her arms.

And dying, dying, dying. Suffocating beneath the earth. Revenge burning in her heart.

A girl whose face is hidden by a fox’s skull, her childish body hunched as she grins in delight. She is the only one that moves, holding her hands in front of her. A globe of light shines within. She curls her fingers around it, taking it away and into the dark.

“ _NO!_ ” Sigyn screams. She needs it. Needs it more than the air she breathes. “Cruel, cruel —”

She is burning.

“We don’t have time,” Loki whispers, urgent. “Sig, look at me. Hear me. We can bring this to completion, now. A release will act as an appropriate catalyst. Fresh blood within you.”

“Yes,” Sigyn says at once. Anything. Anything. “Yes, yes, _yes_ —”

Loki kisses her, pulls her flush to his chest. She thrashes, gasping and panting and her eyes closed tight.

“Careful,” Loki breathes into her mouth. “Careful.” He lowers her to the floor, bending the whalebone of her corset until it snaps with an almighty sound in his desperation to free her from it. “Careful.” He grasps a handful of her breast, and Sigyn moans, arching her back as he closes his mouth over the other. His tongue flicks at the nipple, and the resulting spark ignites a fire between her legs. She aches. Feels a shiver setting in. Is desperate for that feeling of _emptiness_ to be remedied.

She cares not for the dress as Loki tears the silk away from her like tissue, kissing his way down her bare gooseflesh and to her bellybutton. One hand is still at her breast, and the other hooks at the drawstring of her soaked underwear, pulling it loose.

“Gods,” Loki groans. “Look at you. How you writhe.”

The belladonna and Loki’s attentions has lit her mind afire. “Please,” she whispers, her voice hoarse and broken after her days of suffering. “ _Please_ , Loke.”

“Sigunn,” he says, kissing her mouth, moving himself between her legs. She rolls her hips, searching for him.

She gasps as he enters her, moving her hips forcefully into his so take him fully; she stops only when he will go no further. Her hands are buried deep in her hair, her mouth open in a gasp she is convinced will never end. It is glorious. Loki grazes the exposed column of her throat with his teeth as he shifts his weight, pressing himself as close as possible to her.

“Gods,” he says, over and over. “Gods, Sigunn….”

“Move,” she breathes. “ _Move_.”

And he does, burying his face into the juncture of her shoulder as he lets go, driving into her again and again. Sigyn pulls him to her, wrapping her legs about him and holding on. His face is contorted into a snarl as he takes her, ravishes her with his mouth and grinds a knuckle hard against her clitoris.

Her back arches. “Vinsamlegast!” she cries, tears slipping into her hair at the intensity. “Vinsamlegast, vinsamlegast —”

“Ást minn,” Loki says, and as her climax takes her, the locks upon her memories break.

 

 

**_iii. heart of mine_ **

_A laugh_ _…_

She is gold, the sun warming her skin as she runs through lush forestlands of pine. Her feet are damp with the dew, unfeeling of the rocks and twigs beneath soles hardened with callous. There is a charm flying behind her in the wind on a chain of gold, the rune at the end lost in the rich colour of her hair. Her laugh is a thing caught by the bracken and pulled close by the forest bark.

 _A heartbeat_ _…_

There is light in this forest a thousand miles from her own, the night alive with the sounds of primal celebration. Drink flows endlessly, songs break the evening sky, and the women crook their fingers at the men to follow them into the trees. She can hear them in the dark, loving. She pays them little mind. She is touched on the arm, and she turns to face the man who had reached for her. What she sees is a fire’s heart banishing the darkness.

 _A sigh_ _…_

There is fire on her tongue as she is kissed deep. Every touch, every lingering caress upon her skin, is felt a thousandfold, the sensations as sharp as the lick of a whip.

 _A dream_ _…_

The air is bitterly cold in her lungs, the wind a sting on her face. Beneath her, a cliff falls away so suddenly a single misstep would send a man to his death. Before her, the fjord stretches as far as the eye can see. There are fingers entwined with hers, warm as if they had recently been held before a fire. They are familiar. They are comfort. When she turns her head, the sinking sun highlights his profile, throwing it into stark contrast. The straight nose, the thin lips, the sharp jut of his brow. The colour of his hair is the only thing not lost to the sun — the fiery red of it tossed into disarray by the wind.

 _A word_ _…_

Happiness. A fount of it blooming within her. It is a thing that seems never-ending, a high that will not crash. She is free here, arms spread wide as if she will fly.

He stands behind her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders as his teeth graze the shell of her ear. “Sigunn,” he says.

* * *

The floorboards of the ship are hard against her back. She does not notice the wood as he spills in her, pressing himself to her chest and whispering into her skin as he basks in his pleasure. Gods, how many times she has seen him like that, lost in the high. She will never tire of the sight. He is beautiful. She threads her fingers through his hair, hair that is now as black as ink. “Loke,” she whispers with a new clarity.

There are memories in her eyes.

* * *

The mortals have cried for the help of their gods for days now, beseeching them, sacrificing for them in the hope to please.

Their prayers are answered in due time.

“You are troubled.”

The human is nothing more than a farmer, sitting on his fence as he watches his sheep graze; the dogs he has trained do much of the work for him. He starts badly when she speaks, almost falling off the fence.

“Lady —” he says, eyes roaming over her clothing. She wears a man’s britches, a shirt of chainmail too over a boiled leather jerkin. Her arms are protected by leather and metal guards, and her hair braided away from her face. Beside her, her husband stands as a beacon of light. Light Bringer, they call him. He is said by some to have breathed life into the first people of this earth, as well as gifting them with cleverness. His true-red hair spills loose over his shoulders, fire flickering in its depths. His green eyes are a shifting mass, ranging from emerald to forest to golden green every few seconds. His fingers are long, dexterous, scarred from both craft and war. Scars line his lips too; they resemble stitchmarks.

“Lævísi,” the farmer calls him, falling to his knees. “The gods have come.”

The name of devious might have enraged him in another time, but now, it is only a description, as meaningless as being called tall. “Why have you called us?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

“Terrible things have been happening,” the farmer says. “People crushed, chewed to blood and bone, eaten. It is a _draugr_ , Lævísi. We are unable to stop it.”

“You did not take the necessary precautions to stop it in the first place,” she says. “Why should we help you when this destruction stems from your foolishness?”

“It is our _jarl_ ’s foolishness,” the farmer says. “We raided recently, and he buried his share of the spoils. He killed one of his men to guard the treasure, and that man walks again.” When they say nothing more, the farmer begs of them, “Believe me. I speak only truth.”

“We know,” he says. “The Allfather has bid us help you, but at a price.”

“What does the Allfather require of us?”

“He wishes for the sacrifice of your finest bull, and the gift of a maiden,” she says. “The fairest to look upon in your community upon whom he shall sire a son. If you accept this proposal, we shall rid you of this _draugr_. If you refuse, we shall leave, and the _draugr_ will continue to plague you until a worthy hero comes to this country. We will return in a day to receive your answer.”

They are gone before their words finish echoing in the farmer’s mind. They return when the sun hangs in the same position in the sky as it did the day before. The farmer is not alone upon their return. Three other men stand with him, axes on their belts and chainmail on their shouders.

“We accept your terms,” their leader says. “This way.”

They follow the leader of the group through gently rolling hills, and soon the cookfire lights of a small village wink into sight. “We have prepared a feast for your honour,” the leader says.

“Have it in the open,” she says. “We will draw this _draugr_ out.”

“Where is the grave?” her husband asks.

The farmer bows. “I will show you, lord.”

He takes them to a boulder patch, shows them a lump in the earth.

“Dig it up,” she commands.

“Lady, we have tried.”

“Do as she says,” he says.

The farmer looks around a little helplessly before he leaves, returning with a spade.

“The grave remains open,” he says, and they wander back to the village as the farmer continues to toil away.

The sun falls behind the hills, but the light does not go. A feast is raging within the village’s centre, its inhabitants toasting them again and again until their noses are red with drink and they have fallen into stupors upon the table. But they drink little, minds alight and senses alert for disturbance. Powerful they may be, god-like and divine, carelessness will still hurt them. Their hands are on their weapons.

It is nearly midnight before the _draugr_ shows itself. The human form is grotesque in its size, naked, the skin grey with rot and the once blond hair scraggly on its scalp. The limbs are elongated, the fingers spider-like. Its eyes are milky opals, and the teeth in its mouth like sharpened river stones. It takes a woman at the edge of the feast, snatching her into the night. She screams as she vanishes.

He leaps over the table, his limbs flowing with fire as he draws his sword. The weapon is a deep bronze in colour, singing as it leaves its sheath. These humans have their _ulfberht_ swords, but his sword is far their superior, made of steel stolen from Hel herself. The edges of the blade glow a cherry red as he searches the dark, she prowling beside him as they listen. The _draugr_ is an intelligent creature, cunning in its hate. It stalks the night on silent feet, watching them from the dark.

“ _Æsir_ ,” it hisses from every side. “ _Æsir._ ”

“Skepna,” he replies. “Þú ættir ekki að vera hér.”

It opens its mouth in a horrific scream, and anything lesser than what they are would have been unable to move for the pain of the cry. But this it does not know, so when it leaps for them from the dark, they move. He stabs it in the belly with his bronze sword, and the _draugr_ wails. His arms shake as it swells in size, driving the blade in further. But the undead care not for whatever steel might pierce their flesh. The weight of the creature would have killed a human.

But she is there, burying her sword in its back and hauling it away. It falls on the ground, hissing like a wounded animal.

“Óhroða,” it gasps. The claws on its hands are like razors, coming at their faces faster than the eye can follow. But he meets the claws with his sword, throwing them away so he may land a heavy blow to its chest with the heel of his hand alive with fire. The _draugr_ screams again as it is burned, its flesh consumed by flames. It falls to the ground, writhing.

“Skepna,” he says again. “Fara aftur til grafar þinn.”

The grave is open behind them, and she steps forward, thrusting the sword through the creature’s chest and into the earth. It is trapped on the sword, pinned in its grave like a rabbit in a snare. They ignore its twists and screams as they bury it, bind it with locking sigils, and they leave only when the villagers slit the throat of a goat over the site come morning.

“Remember your promise,” she tells the village. “We shall return for the payment we have asked of you on Midsummer.”

And then they leave, their business closed.

 _A_ draugr _is a thing to beware. Do you remember?_

The world before her is frozen. The woman is standing behind Sigyn, a woman who looks identical to her in every way. But there is a hardness around her edges that Sigyn does not possess, a look that quells any who would think to defy. She is above all those she has seen before; it is an aura that cannot be ignored.

“You are Sigunn,” Sigyn says.

“I am you,” Sigunn says. “You are me, born again into another body.”

“How?”

“The cycle is not broken,” Sigunn answers. “The wheel is turning still, set into motion for Those Who Sit Above In Shadow.

“They ate our lives,” Sigunn says. “They have done for generations. We have lived so many times in so many iterations, and we’ll be trapped unless we free ourselves, or they will eat our lives again and again and again. You must understand that we are one and the same. Every one of your pains I share, and you share mine. We can stop the pain, Sigyn.”

“How?”

“They are gods above gods. Like the gods of Olympus, they survive on incorporeal offerings — our pain, our grief. The grief that the Allfather has put upon us when he killed our babies, tortured us for centuries, and everything that came as a result of it. This cycle has played out again and again, and will end only when he dies on the teeth of the Fenris Wolf.” The still naked blade at her side glitters. “So we will disrupt their games. By killing Odin Allfather before he can strike at us. If he dies on steel, the cycle will break, for They will have nothing to feed upon.” She smiles. “Go with Loki, trust him. Love him. He needs you.”

And there is love there. Love so overpowering she gasps at its intensity. Love for Loki, for children she has never had. It is a passion that burns with rage though, at losing them. At their murders.

_They ate our lives._

“They won’t eat them this time,” Sigyn vows, cradling her hands close to her breastbone. She feels as if she will burst for the anger.

“Are you sure?”

Sigyn looks up sharply. Sigunn is gone, and in her place is the girl she saw before. She’s older than she first thought, in her teenage years, but her body is undeveloped, her chest flat as a board, her waist made of straight lines. Her hair is a mess flying about her face.

“Will we be happy?” Sigyn asks her.

The Cheshire cat smile the girl gives seems sinister beneath the fox’s skull. “No.”

* * *

The candles are dying. Two of them have tipped over, rolling across the floor as the ship sways on the sea. The wicks have been extinguished. Sweat shines on their skin, a gleam in the light of the remaining candles. His face is hidden behind the curtain of his hair, and his chest rises and falls as he catches his breath. She is trembling, her nerves singing. She reaches for his face, trailing her fingers down the sharpness of his cheekbone, across his lips that are whole and unscarred, and when she hooks her fingers beneath his chin and tilts his face up, she finds his eyes; green embers burn in their vastness. His eyes are of another time, though. They are the same as she remembers.

“Loke,” she whispers again.

“Sigunn,” he says. “Sigunn minn. Mine. Mine….”

“Mine,” she echoes.

“You’re mine,” he growls in that ancient tongue she now understands. “A goddess stripped of her immortality, made to crawl with the dirt and the vermin in that city of smog, choking on fumes and breathing in ashes. You should not be here, not in this realm.”

The powerful thing of memories in her mind agrees, longs to be away from this backwater realm. “I shall not stay,” she says in the same language. “I shall be with you, stand by you.”

“And I you.” He rests his forehead against hers, licking his lips as their fingers entwine. “I am glad you will stay with me. I couldn’t bear it any other way.”

“Neither could I,” she whispers, pulling him close against her. He is still within her, and she closes her eyes. Although he is no longer hard, she basks in the connection. After so long, after lifetimes apart, she never wants him to leave her side.

But they must part. Their consummation is slick and warm upon her thighs, and they worry not for the mess as they retreat to the desk, sitting in the chair and merely holding the other. After so long, after uncounted millennia, being in the other’s arms is enough. He may not be made of fire any more, exchanging that body for the one of ice he wears like she herself now walks in human skin.

“Even after all this time,” he says, “your beauty takes my breath away.”

She laughs. “For all your boasting of a silver tongue, it can be quite leaden at times.”

“It so aptly happens that the expression that best suits the situation already exists,” he says. “Because it’s true, Sigunn. I cannot breathe through the tightness of my chest when I see you. This life time, the last, it makes no difference.”

“Mmm.” She laced her fingers together and hangs her arms around his neck. She leans forward then, curled upon his lap as she kisses him chastely on the lips. “You’ve changed,” she says, letting his hair slide between her fingers.

“Fortunately you are as I remember. Lucky that, isn’t it? I feel like we wouldn’t have otherwise noticed each other.”

“Oh, have faith,” she says. “You would have recognised me even if my skin were of ebony and my hair as black as yours. You would have seen me for who I am if I were fat or bone. If I were a storm giant, even.” The words tumbled from her mouth before she knew what they meant.

“If you were a storm giant born without your memories,” he says, “there would have been little chance I could have called you back.”

She throws back her head and laughs. “Ahh. I’ve told you about myself, you’ve seen how I lived, so I think it only fair now for you to tell me what you’ve done.”

His fingers tighten in the small of her back. “The Allfather … he took me in as a babe, he knew what part I am to play in Ragnarók, and sought to stop me through sentiment and familial love.”

She’s startled. She thinks of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, of the terrifying figure of Odin Allfather in the opera. And there are shadows of memories hanging over her head, memories of the Allfather standing above her, huge and frightful. Condemning her sons to death. She flinches.

“I knew what he was from the time of my earliest memories. I hid my hatred, nurtured it, because it isn’t just him that has to die — it’s all of them, and he the last body to fall. So after years of hiding, years of laying low, I killed Balder the Beautiful. I was held beneath Asgard for years more after that, until she was attacked and her enemies stormed the dungeons, freeing me as well as the other inmates. I fled to Jotunheim, and came from Jotunheim to Miðgarðr when the portal opened. And I _found_ you. I found you after a lifetime of separation.” He holds her close. “The Norns tried to hide you from me, but I will always find you, no matter how far away you are. They will never keep us apart, never. I will make sure of it. For this cycle … this cycle we will be victorious, lover-mine. We will kill our enemies, avenge our blood. Our children. Together, we will bring Ragnarók. And we will _win_.”

“Aye,” she whispers into his chest. “Aye….”

But beneath all these new words and attitude, she is gentle.

* * *

 _S.S. Daughter_ ’s boards creak as she glides through the calm North Sea. Even below decks, Theoric feels sick. The doctor on board, Mr. Moyes, won’t allow him to rise from bed, insisting that if he is to finish this voyage before he recovers from the wound, rest is the most important thing he needs.

 _Sigyn_ _’s safety is the most important thing I need_ , Theoric thinks. In the dead of night, there is no one to stop him climbing gingerly from bed. He’s too worried about Sigyn to be worried for himself. He’s only glad he’s alive.

The gunshot had brought the servants running, Mrs. Nair’s scream announcing their arrival mere moments before they found him on the floor. Mrs. Nair had left to find the closest doctor whilst several others had done their best to provide first aid. A Mr. Jones had been by his side twenty minutes later, finally pulling the knife free and stitching the wound shut. Theoric had been weak for days, all the while making plans and paying to hire a ship to follow Harrison’s stolen _Thelxiope_ north. After the newspapers had reported finding Harrison in his study the night after his latest party, driven, seemingly permanently, to incoherent madness, Theoric was sure the black-haired man had everything to do with it. Four days later, he had been helped aboard _S.S. Daughter_.

 _S.S. Daughter_ is the fastest steam ship docked in London’s wharfs, fortunately owned by a wealthy widow Theoric’s mother is close friends with. Nevertheless, he had to pay a substantial amount to borrow it. But the money was nothing in the face of Sigyn’s safe return.

The breeze is a welcome respite on his face, the salt dry on his lips and thick in his hair.

“Lord Theoric, you shouldn’t be on deck.” He looks around at the cabin boy standing at the ship’s prow, tightening ropes. “The doctor —”

“I know what Mr. Moyes has said,” Theoric said. “I shall be but a few moments.” He finds the rolling of the sea easier to stomach when he is standing, the vertigo the rocking gives him lessens on his feet. It is strange, he thinks. “Continue with your tasks.”

The boy nods hesitantly and leaves him in peace. Theoric grimaces when his back in turned, leaning against the nearest surface. His chest aches, throbs with pain. He can barely draw breath without wincing.

Two days out from London, and already the weather is turning chill. The captain says they’re somewhere just south of Edinburgh, and that the decks are slick with ice in the mornings. Theoric’s hands are freezing, and he tucks them under his armpits, shivering violently.

 _Sigyn_ , he thinks.

“My Lord Theoric!”

Theoric groans as Mr. Moyes come up behind him. The little man is frantic, wringing his hands. “My lord, please, you must stay in bed.”

“I needed air,” Theoric mumbles.

“You need to keep those stitches shut,” Mr. Moyes says, impatient. “For your own good, my lord, you _must_ stay inside.”

But he can’t. He needs to move to at least give the illusion he is doing something. Sigyn. Her wellbeing….

“If it’s morphine you need for the pain, my lord, then you need only send one of the crew to find me,” Mr. Moyes is saying as he oversees Theoric’s return to his rooms.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Theoric replies. But he doesn’t want morphine. He wants his head clear.

“There you are, my lord,” Mr. Moyes says as Theoric climbs back into bed. “Now, let me see the stitches quickly.”

None of them have broken.

* * *

The belladonna has made a duality within her. Sometimes Sigyn will find herself thinking her own thoughts, and sometimes they will entwine like lover’s fingers with Sigunn’s memories. They move quietly together like the waters of a gentle sea, mingling and merging. She often finds herself lost in a memory that is not her own, finds herself atop a knoll she has never seen before as children that are of her body but yet not tumble in the grass, laughing in the soft evening light. Beside her is her husband, tall and thin and fiery of heart. His hair is the colour of flames, and she finds memories of that hair in her mind, of running her fingers through it during the warm summer nights they make love, as she sits with his head on her lap and luxuriates in his quiet company which is slow and deep, of the way it flows through the air as he swings Lævateinn in a deadly arc, the blood that mats it after battle hiding the brilliant bronze of the blade.

“My Valkyrie,” he says of her. “My Sigunn.”

Whenever Sigyn wakes from these dreams, these memories, she finds Sigunn standing before her, calm, beautiful.

 _They ate our lives_ , she says always. _They will eat our lives again. Save us._

She will stand opposite him on the upper deck, sword in hand and reliving the movements through memory as she exchanges blows. She leaves English behind and talks only in Norse, the words far more natural on her tongue. Her only dress, the one she wore when she came aboard, is too torn to save. She exchanges it for trousers and shirts in which she feels far more free; she shudders at the very idea of having to squeeze back into her old attire.

But there are times when she will look at herself, catch a reflection cast from a porthole window, feel the way she squares her shoulders and the ache of her body after her fights with him, and wonder what she has become. There are moments too when she struggles to remember London, remember her mother and her father, her house and the maids, sweet Rosie. She panics one morning when she finds she cannot recall Theoric’s face.

 _Leave him_ , Sigunn says in her mind. _He is not important anymore._

 _Yes he is_ , Sigyn thinks. “Of course he isn’t,” Sigyn says. “He is nothing.”

She has Loke. She has that part of her _s_ _ál_ back. She is whole.

Yet the wholeness has only opened a gateway for a new hollow feeling in her heart. For she is of two worlds, two lives. She cannot forget her years here. When they lie together, clutching at the other in the lamplight as they move as one, she is torn. Because despite the love, despite everything that bares down on her shoulders, the knowledge and the ghost of grief that would harden another into a spear’s point, something is wrong.

The first time she sees it is when one of the cabin boys serving them a fine dinner of smoked meats and red wine turns from the table. The boy’s elbow knocks her wine glass over and onto the floor, nearly splashing her feet. At the other end of the long table, he rises from his seat, fingers twitching as he reaches for his magic in his anger. Power comes to him in a heartbeat, crackling between his fingers. But it is gone a second later, and he says in a calm manner, “Have this cleaned up at once.”

“Yes, Sir. I apologise, Sir.”

“Apologise to her,” he growls.

“My apologies, my lady,” the cabin boy says, his voice lifeless.

“No harm has been done,” she says, and the boy bows deeply and leaves.

He is careless in the way he speaks to the crew, belittling them in a manner that treads the line of cruelness. When they displease him, he goads them, calling them to fight. When they respond, he defeats them, thoroughly. He bruises them, breaks a man’s arm through sheer accident, but he isn’t sorry for it. And they do not complain of the treatment, sinking further under his spell until mutiny is the last thing on their minds.

“They are human,” he says to her. “Ants beneath us.”

“And just as plentiful,” she agrees.

 _But I am human_.

That human part of her writhes when she sees how they unknowingly bow to his whim, scrape themselves at his feet with the smallest twitch of his finger. Proud men crumble before him, and he doesn’t give a damn.

 _Sentiment_ , Sigunn says. _Your heart is harder than that._

It is.

Sigunn pounds through her blood. Her attitude becomes aloof as Norway’s coast slides past them over the next week. When one of the crew dies in his sleep on New Year’s Day, Sigunn fills her mind. _Forget your attachment. Humans die_ , she reasons. _They die by the hundreds every day. Underneath their imposed titles, their imposed stations, they are all the same. But we, though, gods, we can change the universe. We can bring it to fire and ruin, or we can lift it into something more, something like Valhalla in its grandeur. A human, though? They have no impact, even their greatest minds are laughed at by Yggdrasil_ _’s other races as they discover they can prod at the universe._

_Pity them, but nothing more._

All in all, they are beneath her.

“Their lives are worth nothing,” he says to her, echoing Sigunn when she expresses her conflict of thoughts. “Their existence is like a novelty. If they die today, tomorrow, in ten centuries time, it does not matter. When a human dies, their world continues on. When gods die, worlds die. They’re born to die, lover mine.”

“Yes,” she answers. But when she pushes Sigunn back, she remembers the people she knows. How, even though they may not be as important as her lover says they both are, those she knows have bright flames of their own. Her human mother, her father, the friends she lost years and years ago.

Theoric.

“ _Everything you do makes me feel special_ ,” she had said to him. Memory washes over her. Of how he was gentle with her, thought of her, brought her gifts by the dozens when he wanted to apologise. He did make her feel special.

Her lover did too in a past life. But standing here before her, he is twisted by hate. Hurting. Hurting more than she can bear.

“Theoric —”

“ _Theoric?_ ” he spits, body sharp and tense. “Why do you talk of him? He is _nothing_!” He grabs her by the front of her shirt, shaking her. “He is nothing to us, Sigunn. He is a human, a filthy human.”

“And me?” she asks. “Is my body not human?”

“Yes, but you are _you_. Born a goddess true. I will make you one in body again, elevate you so your life will span the ages as mine will.” Frustration thrums in his voice. Then, he takes a breath. “Theoric, though, he was keeping us apart,” he says, calmer now. “Think of him no more. He is unimportant, and he will trouble you no more.”

 _I was to marry him_ , she thinks. There is a stirring within her. A muscle in her cheek twitches.

His sharp eyes do not miss it. “Why?” he asks, pained. “Am I not enough for you?”

“Wh—? If course you are!” She kisses his jawline, buries her head into the crook of his shoulder. “I’m yours, only yours,” she says. “Do not think it any other way.”

“Truly?”

“With every fibre of my soul.”

Long seconds pass. “I killed him,” he says. “The night we left that city, I killed him.”

In the walls, machinery hums. She cannot say anything, for her tongue has turned to lead. Her mind is empty — empty of words, of feelings, of Sigunn.

“You _what_?” she finally manages. _You killed him_ , she screams at him. _You **killed him** —_

“He did not love you as I do. He felt only lust for you. That day when we found each other again, I saw how he looked at you when your back was turned. The hunger in his eyes. When he held you he cupped your breasts. Do you not remember that?”

Her memories of that day are hazy, she cannot remember how Theoric held her.

“He would have touched you as I have,” he says, desperate to convince her. “Known you as only I should know you. I couldn’t stand the thought of what he would do to you as your husband. He was a brute in lives past, and he would have been no different now. Then he was captain to the elite soldiers of Asgard’s armies, and now he is a lord used to getting his own way. He would have harmed you, raped you, so I stopped it. For your sake. For us.”

“I …”

At her doubt, his face falls. “Do you not remember those times as I do? When he did those things to you? He broke your spirit.”

“I do not. I remember only our source-selves.”

“The memories of other lives will come back in time, I promise.” He kisses her brow. “The rush of reclaiming your past memories may confuse the ones of the life you have led this cycle. I was born with them; my mind is clear. I tell you only what I saw. I love you. I always will. We’re here, together. He will be nothing but dust soon. Sigunn, please look at me.” He holds her head between his hands, fixing her gaze with his. “Do not think of him any more. It’s us, now. Just us, as it should be.”

 _No_ , she thinks. _No. That is not how I remember him. Theoric was a good man._

“It’s just us, lover-mine. He is nothing.”

_Who are you?_

That question again.

“You understand why I did it, don’t you?” he asks.

“Yes, Loke,” Sigyn says, squeezing her eyes shut. “I do.”

“Then think of him no more.”

* * *

It is January eighth when Spitsbergen looms over the horizon. He watches her fondly as she climbs to the highest point she can on the ship, clutching at one of the thick cables that supports the ship’s chimney so she may swing free of it to better see. It is winter, and so, like Jotunheim, Spitsbergen is a night land. It is high in the Arctic Circle, in the no man’s land between Norway and the Arctic and likewise, to his knowledge, has sworn no sovereignty. Its islands are populated mostly by Norwegians.

The Norwegians permanently settled on Spitsbergen’s largest island hail them as they pull into Longyearbyen closer to five o’clock in the evening.

“Sir Harrison,” a man he recognises says, coming up the gangplank and onto the deck. His accent is thick, his black beard equally so. “You’ve come back already? London is a hungry crowd, is she not?”

“Hungry, yes.” He comes into the man’s sight, fixing him with his gaze. “And we are not going back. You are Reidar, are you not?”

“Sir …?” Reidar’s smile disappears, and he takes a step back.

“You wondered of the supposed intelligence of the giants when you last travelled through to Jotunheim in October,” he says. “Know that we are indeed intelligent, and that if you do not guide us back to your rip, then I will show you just how much I have learnt of human hurt during my time here. Harrison was an apt example to study upon.” He had opened Harrison’s drawers after breaking the human’s mind, and he raises one of his finds now, pointing it at Reidar. The silver shine of the gun’s muzzle is eerie in the moonlight. “So if you would be so kind to take us there.”

“Sir, please,” Reidar says, nervous sweat breaking out on his brow.

He clicks the hammer into position. “Now.”

“I-I’ll have to get supplies,” Reidar says quickly. “Horses and food enough for your men. I can round up Sigurd’s Men —”

“None of that,” he snaps. “It’s going to be you, me, and a lady of mine. Know that if you tell anyone of me and what we are doing here, I will know. Owen, come here.”

The man has been breathing in his magic for days now, and so it takes only the smallest twitch of his magic to bring him forward.

“Take out your knife, Owen,” he says. Owen does so. “Cut off your little finger.”

Owen kneels upon the deck, left hand splayed before him. He does not hesitate to place the edge of the blade on the joint.

“Sir!” Reidar exclaims. “I shall not tell anyone, I swear it by God’s name. I shall do as you ask, tell no one of you.”

“Good,” Loki says, and he waves Reidar away with the gun. “Off you go.”

“This man —”

“Will stay as he is until you have done as I’ve bid,” he says. “Now _leave_.”

Reidar is quick to depart, and quick to return a half hour later.

She has joined him when the human returns, three horses on the quay beneath the ship.

“Owen,” he says, and the first mate rises swiftly to his feet, sheathing his knife in his belt. “Leave this place. Go to another port, another city to which you have never been, and disappear there.”

“Yessir.”

“My lady,” he says, holding his elbow out to her.

She takes his arm, and the two of them walk to the horses. Whatever strangeness they felt being on dry land is soothed when they mount, the swaying motion of the horses’ gaits lulling them in a fashion similar to the sea’s rolling. Beneath the illusion of furs he wears, the gun is still trained on Reidar’s back. It’s a beautiful weapon considering what the humans possess — handmade and lovingly so.

“It’s a two day ride to the portal,” he says to her. “We’re going home.”

* * *

They travel deep into Nordenskiöld Land, west of Longyearbyen. It is a mountainous region, gripped deep by the winter. The horses have struggled with the journey, Reidar too, but she has not been troubled by it. Her lover has reverted to his jotun shape, calming the horse with a cantrip and has cast a spell of warmth over her. She is dressed in thick furs though, musky and gloriously warm. He has gifted her with weapons too, made from the same bronzen steel he possessed in the vision of the _draugr_. She wears them on her hip, and her hair waves wildly around her face in the wind. Her heart is set, her mind the quiet of the sea before a storm.

It would be dawn in London when they break their final camp, two days away from civilisation. As they get closer to the portal, the weather turns wilder. Soon they are caught within the arms of a storm desperate to leech the life from them.

“Stop!”

Reidar looks almost dead in his saddle. His face is covered in wind burn, the tip of his nose black from the cold. Her lover had taken away his face mask when he tried to run for help on the first night. Sigunn hums through her veins; she feels nothing for him.

“We’re here,” Reidar croaks. “Sir, please.”

Her lover dismounts from his horse, Harrison’s gun in hand as he steps onto the plateau Reidar has brought them too. In its centre is the heart of the storm. It lashes and howls from there, blowing wild to every corner of the world. The mountains surrounding them are lost in the white-out.

“This is Jotunheim’s rage,” he calls over the howling wind. “You will not survive it, Reidar.”

“I have done as you asked,” the human says hoarsely. “Let me go.”

He cocks his head to the side, considering him. “Sigunn,” he finally says, “you will come with me, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” she answers without hesitation.

He nods. “Very well then, Reidar, you are free to go.” He shoots the man in the chest.

Reidar’s horse screams at the sound of the shot and the loss of her rider, and she turns tail and flees back the way they had come, the human’s corpse bouncing along by the stirrup his foot is caught in. Her own horse starts, but her lover’s magic presses upon its mind, calming it, soothing. His horse doesn’t react.

“The snow is deep,” he says. “I’ll be here to guide you.”

She goes to him, her boots sinking into the snow. The drift comes to her knees.

He turns back to the portal, and she can sense the excitement within him. “Home.”

Their tracks are buried as soon as they’re made, the blizzard erasing their paths. Neither of them notice, too fixated upon the portal and what it offers on the other side.

“I need you,” he says. “I cannot pass through it without you.”

Because of the human blood coursing through her veins. She is his key as she has always been. She nods.

The space around the rip swirls with a fury she has never seen before. It is as if it is being sucked through, the image behind it blurred into nothing. The hole itself is a jagged thing, twenty feet tall by a mere four feet wide. Beyond it is a darkness so complete she can see nothing.

“I’ll go through first,” he shouts over the howl. “You can come through after me.”

She grips his hand as he climbs through, hissing as if he is in pain until he vanishes to the other side. There is a sucking noise, and she cries out as if burned, pulling her arm back and wailing in pain. He looks back at her, fearful. “S—”

In Jotunheim, a beam of rainbow light splits the sky.

“ _No!_ ” he roars.

Warriors pour from the light — men clad in golden armour with swords unsheathed. The blades flare with electric light, throwing the scene into a horrifying montage of images. _Einherjar_ , she thinks.

He summons a weapon of his own a heartbeat later — a three-pronged spear that evaporates the flakes that land upon it in an instant. Green fire flares in his other hand.

“Stay back!” he calls to her. “They cannot touch you there!” He snarls as he catches the first sword upon his spear, thrusting his hand up and through the Einherji’s chest. Gore paints the Jotunheim snow, and the others let their battle cries ring forth as they charge.

She backs away from the portal, a snarl on her face. He is right — they are not human, the portal cannot carry them through to the world in which the rip originated without it tearing their every atom apart. She falls back into the snow, clutching one of her knives tightly, her other arm upthrown to shield her face. Blood soaks her arm, she dully realises, the pain blocked by the rush of battle.

 _Fight, love_ , she thinks. _FIGHT!_

“… Sigyn …”

She looks around at the far away voice. Elation rises within her, disgust too. The duality in her fights. There is a horse battling through the wind, a man upon its back.

“Sigyn!”

It is Theoric.

God…. He came for her. He _came for her_. Her breath quickens, her mind afire. Chasing after her, caring this deeply for her … Theoric’s actions are not those of a man rotten with lust. She looks at Loki, and horror blooms inside her. Uncertainty, rage. Doubt. But she can see what he does on the other side of the portal, how he kills the Einherjar. How he _laughs_. Revels in their suffering and their deaths.

This is not the man she knows.

“You lied to me,” she weeps, her heart breaking.

 _You are tainted_ , Sigunn says. _He knew you would never follow when you had_ them _._

She has been living in a dream for too long, drifting from day to day. She struggles back to awareness, fighting tooth and nail against whatever spell has held her since the night she went back to the warehouse. Her mouth is open in a scream she cannot hear as she finally, _finally_ , pulls herself from the mire. She throws her head back and gasps for the first breath of air she has truly tasted for weeks.

Sigunn loses her. Sigyn fights free.

“Theoric!” Sigyn shouts, legs burning as she turns back and fights her way through the snow and wind. “ _Theoric!_ ”

“ _Sigyn!_ ”

“Sigunn, we need to leave!” Loki howls at her as he runs one of the Einherjar through with his blade. He has not realised what has happened within her. “We must go!”

Her will is torn. The urge to obey Loki, to leave this realm and burn those that wronged them, is like the pull of a magnet. Physical pain alights in her chest. She feels as if she has been grasped by the arms by two people trying to pull her in opposite directions. “Get out of my head,” she cries.

 _Weak_ , Sigunn snarls. _I was warrior once, but now I simper. How could I have turned into this? This weak drivel of a lifeform?_

Loki kills the last of the Einherjar with a blow that rents him in two. His arms are coated to his elbows with blood. It is splattered over his face, steaming off him. His eyes are wild when he sees the collapsing portal, and he struggles towards her, blasting his way through his slaughter. But at the portal he is thrown back, stopped by an invisible barrier that can only be crossed by those of human blood. He smashes his fist into it. “Sigunn!”

 _Go to him_ , Sigunn says. _We are meant._

“No,” Sigyn whispers. “I will not be circumscribed to fate.”

_It is woven in the fabric of creation!_

“Come with me!” Loki screams through the wind. “ _Sigunn!_ ”

The name is like the snapping of a lock mechanism. And so Sigyn reaches forth within her mind and tells the worlds to seal. For she is as much a fetter to Loki as a key.

 ** _No!_** Sigunn wails. Desperation licks at her voice, and Sigyn screams herself when the pain of being torn apart only grows stronger. _You will let them get away with it? They murdered our babies! They murdered them!_

A violent wind rips through the air, and her chest aches as the portal begins to close forever, sealing Loki on one side, and her on the other.

“They are not mine,” Sigyn gasps. “They were yours, goddess, not mine. Be gone.”

 _Never_ , Sigunn promises. _I am you. I will always be you._

Loki howls as he claws at the rip, trying to lodge it open. “Sigunn! Don’t!”

 _The only way our suffering will end is through blood, as Those Who Sit Above In Shadow demand_ , Sigunn pleads. _We can finally find **peace**._

“I will not find your peace through blood!” Sigyn cries. “You are both made of memories, but I will refuse to be shackled by them as you are. _Be gone!_ ” She reaches again and, with a heart-wrenching sound of pure, animal grief, hauls the portal shut. A sound like a thundercrack splits the sky, and all that is left of Loki is the fading note of his voice, a note soon torn away by a calm wind. Sigyn pants and shakes, hoping that it’s over, yet dreading that it is finished. Her ears ring, and trembles hold her fast. She looks to where the portal sat, and all there is to show is an innocent patch of sky. There is no storm, no glimpse of another world. No Loki.

“Sigyn!” she hears Theoric shouting.

Her mind still rests with Loki, a curious tangle of emotion choking her — long remembered heartache, grief, love, and a disappointment so great and bitter that she can taste it thick on her tongue. She mourns how the man she had loved in another life has descended into a creature of hatred, and she fears that if she had taken his hand, had crossed that portal with him, he would have pulled her into his madness too. She is not a thing of violence. Not the woman Loki had ached for.

_I am not your Sigunn._

“Goodbye, my darling,” Sigyn whispers, before she falls to her knees in the snow. She barely feels Theoric wrap his arms around her, hardly hears him yelling for someone to bring him blankets. But she sobs into his shoulder, and her heart cracks down the middle, forever to lie in two.

* * *

He has lost her again. He did everything to gain her trust and tie her to him — charming her to receive her favour more quickly, nudging her along the path she was falling down with soft hints, breaking humanity’s strict sexual stigmas to morally tie her to him — and Sigunn rose within her like a phoenix from the ashes. But the humanity within her was too strong; his efforts have borne the sourest of fruits. He did what he had to to get her back, he told himself every time he pushed her. But it seems that even the little he did was too much.

He is numb as the Æsir seize him, twisting his arms high behind his back, wrapping them in irons. The sudden, soul splitting loss of his magic is far less painful than the agony of losing her.

 _My Sigunn. My beautiful Sigunn_ _…._

Where had it gone wrong? She hadn’t found out about his gentle manipulation, had she? But despite all of that, he had told her the truth, and only the truth. He had offered her freedom, revenge against those who have wronged them in uncounted lives…. Everything he did, all in the name of tying them together, was not enough. He thrashes in his chains.

“Highness,” one of Æsir says in sheer reflex.

“Get your hands off of me, Asgardian,” he snarls with as much poison as he can muster.

“You are summoned back to Asgard to answer to your crimes,” the Einherjar captain whose name he does not know tells him. The words are formal; he must be newly promoted.

His mouth is barely closed when Bifröst takes them. He fights through the journey, fighting to get back to Jotunheim, back to the portal and back to her, but he is well and truly caught. His night-accustomed eyes burn with the brightness of Bifröst’s observatory. He closes them, whimpering in pain, and that is enough for the Einherjar to drag him outside. His skin is still jotun, and he cannot change it bound as he is. Shame flares in his chest as he is taken through Asgard, for this true skin, for being slung over the back of a horse like a sack. His face is hidden behind his hair though, and so the people do not recognise him as he is taken to the palace, to the Allfather’s throne.

He is pushed by spear-point to the throne room, forced to his knees before Hlidskjalf and the man sat within.

“Loki,” the Allfather says. One of his ravens _crawk_.

“Allfather,” is his stiff reply. He spits on the polished floor.

“How many years has it been? A hundred?”

“And forty-one,” he hisses.

“Time has not softened your anger.”

“My anger is a thing that will endure suns.”

“Anger towards the truth?”

He laughs at the irony of the statement — the Allfather knows not what truth he has in mind.

“Loki, do you feel any remorse for your crimes? If you swear that you feel even an inkling of it, I will lessen your remaining punishment.”

“I had not realised it was being reconsidered.” He spits again. “I feel no remorse, you old, blind fool. I was righteous.”

“You disappoint me.” The Allfather’s voice is quiet, full of regret.

“Then if that is your stance, you are to continue your sentence,” the Allfather says, and the Einherjar grip his arms. “You will remain in your cell until the end of your days.” And as he is dragged away, his heart is so full of hatred and rage and grief it is all he can do to scream at his father, his blood brother, his tormentor of a hundred thousand life times.

“I know!” he howls at Odin Allfather. Phantom fire licks along his skin — a memory of a long lost lifetime. “I know what you’ve done to us, blood brother mine! I remember _everything._ ”

He is sure Odin freezes at the words, but the Allfather recovers quickly and waves a hand at the guards. He is silenced then, a muzzle clamped tight over his mouth, but he promises himself he will not stop screaming until his vocal chords snap and break beneath the metal. He will fight until the day he dies on Vígríðr to sate his heart of revenge. He _will_ kill the Allfather.

 

 _**iv. these** _ **_honest words_ **

The cell is as he left it: laden with misplaced sentiment. The books his false mother was convinced he read lie still against the far wall, the small tables and chairs freshly dusted and smelling faintly of polish. The bed has fresh sheets laid upon it. He ignores it, ignores everything in the cell designed to give him comfort and instead sinks into a bare corner.

He spends days working at his chains. It leaves his nails broken and barely sitting in their beds, the skin around his bonds raw and weeping. When he ceases his efforts, the manacles and muzzle are free of scratches. The inability to scream his frustration, or indeed to make any kind of vocal sound, eats at him, tears at his mind. The unobtainable need to howl the grief that sits heavy as a greystone in his chest gnaws at him. But at least he can still weep, still inflict the pain he longs for by trying to twist his hands free from the manacles, breaking one of them in the effort. He scoffs at the faint hope still burning within him that they will slip off.

Comfort only comes when the muzzle is removed so he may eat, and these episodes of freedom are quick to become the highlights of his days, no matter how short a time they last. The worst part is when the mouthpiece is forced past his teeth like a horse’s bit. He cannot help but lather at the metal sitting against the roof of his mouth, his tongue unable to leave it be like the gap a missing tooth creates. It makes his mouth fill with saliva and his misery grow.

Two months after his return to the cell, he shatters the glass of the table, hiding one of the bigger shards before the broken furniture is taken away. He waits out the initial wariness of the guards, and their skittishness when they come to him with food. Eleven days after that, he nearly takes one of their eyes before he is subdued with a quick-working drug. When he wakes, he does not recognise his new cell. The white-washed walls have been replaced by dark, rough cut stone. Torches burn high above his head, revealing the pit he has been imprisoned in. Cold air washes against his bare skin, his only modesty a pair of his old trousers given to him perhaps as one last effort of a shade of kindness.

 His freedom has again been restricted by manacles and a collar. Whilst the manacles pull his arms high, the heavy, dwarfen-forged collar keeps his head down. For all he tries, he cannot free himself, fighting like an animal half-crazed against bonds that force him to remain kneeling. His knees are numb with pain, his head bowed with the aching weight of the collar. Humiliation burns him.

It is a week before he sees anyone, another until the gag is finally removed. His pants of relief are the hoarsest things he’s ever heard.

It is only afterwards does he turn to his illusions to comfort. Unlike his tongue, his fingers have not been taken from him. He traces out the spells, winding them about himself, cocoon-like, until he has immersed himself in another time. Day after day, he relives the memories that beat alongside his heart. Sigunn stands upon their knoll, watching from amongst the tall blades of grass their children play; she was always so proud that they had his hair, and he proud they had her eyes. She is peaceful in his illusion, content, and when she turns to him, she smiles. His heart leaps when there is nothing but love in her eyes, and aching loneliness pierces his heart like glass. When he reaches for her, the chains upon his wrists hold him back; his hands are only a fingertip away from hers. But still she continues to smile, to wait for him to place his hand in hers.

 _Help me_ , he begs her. _Free me._

She cannot.

“Prince Loki.”

He doesn’t react for the longest time, lifting his head a few scant inches before the freedom of movement is taken from him. He focuses his mind only when the buzzing of Asgard’s Gatekeeper becomes a pest too bothersome to ignore.

_What are you doing away from your station, Watchman?_

“You miss her, do you not?”

He narrows his eyes, clenches his fingers. The rumble of an animal growl awakes in his throat.  _Do not speak of her._

“Perhaps it would gladden your heart to know that she is safe and well.”

 _With her nothing of a mortal?_  He feels tears sting his eyes.

“I bring news of her, of a letter she has written. It is addressed to you.”

It grabs his attention at once. His gaze fixes on Goldeneyed Heimdall standing high above him on the lip of the pit.  _Where?_  he demands.

Heimdall seems to understand. “The letter itself does not physically exist anymore, but it remains still in my mind. Your brother thought it might lessen some of your heartache to listen to her words. I would tell you them word for word.”

He wants to scream. Those words should be his, not Heimdall’s. He only agrees to hear them because he can’t bear Heimdall being the only one to know them. Sigunn isn’t Heimdall’s to know.

Heimdall seems oblivious to his hatred, for he inclines his head ever-so slightly. “As you wish, Prince Loki.”

* * *

_My Dearest Loki,_

_I know not why I write this letter, for it will be one that I shall never send, even if I could find a postman who knows where you reside. From the corner of my eye, I can see the flicker of the flames that will soon devour this page and my ink, but writing offers me a certain peace of mind. So write I shall._

_I will marry Theoric this coming Sunday. After knowing what we once shared, I am no longer as content with the match as I once was, but I cannot disappoint him, or our families. I cannot disappoint myself with pining for a partnership I know I could never abide by; it is my hope that I will one day know the love for him as I knew for you. But I will not be with you. I will never be with you. We are different creatures, you and I. Your talk of other worlds and the fabric of creation tearing under our fingers offers my heart no joy as it so obviously does yours. For your world is not mine, and it never will be in this lifetime. I will be dutiful, but not to your destruction, to your chaos. I will be dutiful to what I have been brought up to believe in — to my God, to my family, to my queen and country. To my realm._

_For in the end, I would be nothing more than a memory of what you loved, and who I am now would be dust. Like all living creatures, I do not want to be dust; I want to live, and if I had embraced Sigunn, I would have betrayed myself. I doubt I can forgive you for trying to mould me into her. There is such anger in my heart for your actions I do not know what to do with it. You used me for your own ends. You corrupted whatever love I felt for you in another life, but I do not hate you — I feel only disappointed._

_But I have not been idle. I am still the person I was, and if you were here, I would help you. I may as well write it down else it sit on me. The events of the past months have put me into contact with Mr. Magnus Erdahl, a scholar from Norway who lives here in London. He and I talk about the mythology of his homeland, and from our discussions and what memories awaken themselves in me, I think I have puzzled out what part we play in this cycle. For this religion is a thing of suffering — the price for a reward is torment and agony — and our suffering is fed upon by those whom you mentioned in Shadow. Killing the Allfather will not solve anything. The source must be what is quelled, the head of the snake that is severed. For otherwise, like a hydra's heads, our lives will regrow forever._

_If the Allfather lives and we die our natural deaths, the circle will break. Forgive past wrongs, and we will find peace, Loki. We would finally die._

_Know that as much as I despise your actions, there will always be a part of me that loves you. Know that I am more than Sigunn — I am me, and if you wish for true happiness, you will let Loke go. But I fear you will not. Know too that I lost our baby on my return to London. My God I cried. I cry still. A part of me tells you this for spite, but the other part of me tells you for healing. So I shall talk no more of the baby; I grow sad thinking of him._

_I too am one of three other women to have been accepted into Cambridge University to study science, but I have not yet decided which branch to start with. If I am to live with Sigunn's memories until the day I die, then I am determined to use her knowledge to the greatest potential. The professors have granted me a scholarship, and they have told me too they have never seen someone without any university education with knowledge like mine. They told me they expect great things from me despite being a woman, maybe even becoming the first to earn a degree instead of merely attending lectures and lessons. I am to start in September._

_I had envisioned myself writing pages upon pages of words, but the reality is that I have nothing left to say. I am surprised, but I am glad my heart is empty of words — if I had more, it would be all the more difficult to climb out of the rut I have found myself in and return to my life._

_Even though you will not know of my plea, I beg for your forgiveness. For our separation._

_I dearly hope in another life we were happier, and we will be in those yet to come._

 

_—Sigyn_

 

###  _THE END_

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't kill me for the ending ― I wanted to, as **likeatumbleweed** put it, "do the comics right". If this story had turned out any differently, if Sigyn had stayed with Loki when the relationship he had with her was focused on the "what had been", I would have never forgiven myself.
> 
> If you like my writing, feel free to [follow me on Tumblr](http://englishbutter.tumblr.com/) for general writing snippets, photo reblogs, and much LOTR love.
> 
> Merry Christmas everyone, and I hope to see you soon.


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